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TOPICS OF THE TIME. • 

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Number 4 Aug., 1883 

Topics of the Time 



Historical Studies 



EDITED BY 

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CONTENTS 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK 600 YEARS AGO. 
By the Rev. Dr. Augustus Jessopp. The Nine- 
teenth Century ........ I 

SIENA. By Samuel James Cappar. The Contem- 
porary Review ....... 54 

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY. By Frederic Harrison. The 
Nineteenth Century . * . . . -99 

FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. By Oscar 

Browning. The Fortnightly Review . . .141 

GENERAL CHANZY. Temple Bar . . . .179 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK SIX HUN- 
DRED YEARS AGO. 

A VILLAGE LECTURE. 
By the Rev. Dr. JESSOPP. 

[In the autumn of 1878, while on a visit 
at Rougham Hall, Norfolk, the seat of Mr. 
Charles North, my host drew my attention to 
some boxes of manuscripts, which he told me 
nobody knew any thing about, but which I was 
at liberty to ransack to my heart's content. I 
at once dived into one of the boxes, and then 
spent half the night in examining some of its 
treasures. The chest is one of many, constitu- 
ting in their entirety a complete apparatus for 
the history of the parish of Rougham from the 
time of Henry the Third to the present day — 
so complete that it would be difficult to find in 
England a collection of documents to compare 
with it. 

The whole parish contains no more than 2,627 
acres, of which about thirty acres were not 
included in the estate slowly piled up by the 
Yelvertons, and purchased by Roger North in 
1690. Yet the charters and evidences of vari- 



2 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

ous kinds, which were handed over with this 
small property dating before the sixteenth cent- 
ury, count by thousands. The smaller strips 
of parchment or vellum — for the most part con- 
veyances of land, and having seals attached — 
have been roughly bound together in volumes, 
each containing about one hundred documents, 
and arranged with some regard to chronology, 
the undated ones being collected into a volume 
by themselves. I think it almost certain that 
the arranging of the early charters in their rude 
covers was carried out before 1500 A.D., and I 
have a suspicion that they were grouped to- 
gether by Sir William Yelverton, "the cursed 
Norfolk Justice " of the Paston Letters, who 
inherited the estate from his mother, in the first 
half of the fifteenth century. 

When Roger North purchased the property 
the ancient evidences were handed over to him 
as a matter of course ; and there are many 
notes in his handwriting showing that he found 
the collection in its present condition, and that 
he had bestowed much attention upon it. 
Blomefield seems to have been aware of the 
existence of the Rougham muniments, but I 
think he never saw them : and for one hun- 
dred and fifty years, at least, they had lain 
forgotton, until they came under my notice. 
Of this large mass of documents I have copied 
or abstracted scarcely more than five hundred, 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. % 

and I have not yet got beyond the year 1355. 
The court rolls, the bailiff's accounts, and early 
leases I have hardly looked at. 

The following lecture — slight as a village 
lecture must needs be and ought to be — gives 
some of the results of my examination of the 
first series of the Rougham charters. The lect- 
ure was delivered in the Public Reading-room 
of the village of Tittleshall, a parish adjoining 
Rougham, and was listened to with apparent 
interest and great attention by an audience of 
farmers, village tradesmen, mechanics, and labor- 
ers. I was careful to avoid naming any place 
which my audience were not likely to know 
well ; and there is hardly a parish mentioned 
which is five miles from the lecture-room. 

When speaking of " six hundred years," I 
gave myself roughly a limit of thirty years 
before and after 1280, and I have rarely gone 
beyond that limit on one side or the other. 

They who are acquainted with Mr. Rogers' 
" History of Prices " will observe that I have 
ventured to put forward views on more points 
than one, very different from those which he 
advocates. 

Of the value of Mr. Rogers' compilation, and 
of the statistics which he has tabulated with so 
much labor, there can be but one opinion. It 
is when we come to draw our inferences from 
such returns as these, and bring to bear upon 



4 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

them the side-lights which further evidence 
affords, that differences of opinion arise among 
inquirers. I really know nothing about the 
Midlands in the thirteenth century ; I am dis- 
gracefully ignorant of the social condition of 
the South and West ; but the early history of 
East Anglia, and especially of Norfolk, has for 
long possessed a fascination for me ; and though 
I am slow to arrive at conclusions, and have a 
deep distrust of those historians who for every 
pair of facts construct a trinity of theories, I 
feel sure of my ground on some matters, 
because I have done my best to use all such 
evidence as has come in my way.] 

When I was asked to address you here this 
evening, I resolved that I would try to give 
you some notion of the kind of life which your 
fathers led in this parish a long, long time ago ; 
but on reflection I found that I could not tell 
you very much that I was sure of about your 
parish of Tittleshall, though I could tell you 
something that is new to you about a parish 
that joins your own ; and because what was 
going on among your close neighbors at any 
one time would be in the main pretty much 
what would be going on among your fore- 
fathers, in bringing before you the kind of life 
which people led in the adjoining parish of 
Rougham six hundred years ago, I should be 
describing precisely the life which people were 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 5 

leading here in this parish — people, remember, 
whose blood is throbbing in the veins of some 
of you present ; for from that dust that lies in 
your church-yard yonder I make no doubt that 
some of you have sprung — you whom I am 
speaking to now. 

Six hundred years ago ! Yes, it is a long 
time. Not a man of you can throw his 
thoughts back to so great a lapse of time. 
I do not expect it of you ; but nevertheless I am 
going to try to give you a picture of a Norfolk- 
village, and that village which you all know 
better than I do, such as it was six hundred 
years ago. 

In those days an ancestor of our gracious 
Queen, who now wears the crown of England, 
was king ; and the Prince of Wales, whom 
many of you must have seen in Norfolk, was 
named Edward, after this same king. In 
those days there were the churches standing 
generally where they stand now. In those 
days, too, the main roads ran pretty much 
where they now run ; and there was the same 
sun overhead, and there were clouds, and winds, 
and floods, and storms, and sunshine ; but if 
you, any of you, could be taken up, and dropped 
down in Tittleshall or Rougham such as they 
were six hundred years ago, you would feel 
almost as strange as if you had been suddenly 
transported to the other end of the world. 



6 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

The only object that you would at all 
recognize would be the parish church. That 
stands where it did, and where it has stood, 
perhaps, for a thousand years or more ; but, at 
the time we are now concerned with, it looked 
somewhat different from what it looks now. 
It had a tower, but that tower was plainer and 
lower than the present one. The windows, too, 
were very different ; they were smaller and 
narrower ; I think it probable that in some of 
them there was stained glass ; and it is almost 
certain that the walls were covered with paint- 
ings representing scenes from the Bible, and 
possibly some stories from the lives of the 
saints, which everybody in those days was 
familiar with. There was no pulpit and no 
reading-desk. When the parson preached, he 
preached from the steps of the altar. The altar 
itself was much more ornamented than now it 
is. Upon the altar there were always some 
large wax tapers which were lit on great occa- 
sions; and over the altar there hung a small 
lamp which was kept alight night and day. It 
was the parson's first duty to look to it in the 
morning, and his last to trim it at night. 

The parish church was too small for the 
population of Rougham, and the consequence 
was that it had been found necessary to erect 
what we should now call a chapel of ease — 
served, I suppose, by an assistant priest, who 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 7 

would be called a chaplain. I cannot tell you 
where this chapel stood, but it had a burial 
ground of its own. 1 

There was, I think, only one road deserving 
of the name, which passed through Rougham. 
It ran almost directly north and south from 
Coxford Abbey to Castle Acre Priory. The 
village of Rougham in those days was in its 
general plan not very unlike the present village 
— that is to say, the church standing where it 
does ; next to the church-yard was the parson- 
age with a croft attached ; and next to that a 
row of houses inhabited by the principal people 
of the place, whose names I could give you and 
the order of their dwellings, if it were worth 
while. Each of these houses had some out- 
buildings — cow-sheds, barns, etc., and a small 
croft fenced round. Opposite these houses was 
another row facing west, as the others faced 
east ; but these latter houses were apparently 
occupied by the poorer inhabitants — the smith, 
the carpenter, and the general shopkeeper, who 
called himself, and was called by others, the 
merchant. There was one house which appears 
to have stood apart from the rest, and near 
Wesenham Heath. It probably was encircled 

1 Compare the remarkable regulations of Bishop Woodloke 
of Winchester (a. D. 1308), illustrative of this. Wilkins' 
"Cone.," vol. ii., p. 396. By these constitutions every chapel, 
two miles from the mother church, was bound to have its own 
burying ground. 



8 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

by a moat, and approached by a drawbridge, 
the bridge being drawn up at sunset. It was 
called the Lyng House, and had been probably 
built two or three generations back, and now 
was occupied by a person of some consideration 
— viz., Thomas Middleton, Archdeacon of Suf- 
folk, and brother of William Middleton, then 
Bishop of Norwich. This house, too, was on 
the east side of the road, and the road leading 
up to it had a name, and was called the Hut- 
gong. In front of the house was something 
like a small park of five and a half acres enclosed ; 
and next that again, to the south, four acres of 
plowed land ; and behind that again — i. e., be- 
tween it and the village — there was the open 
heath. Altogether this property consisted of a 
house and twenty-six acres. Archdeacon Mid- 
dleton bought it on the 6th of October, 1283, 
and he bought it in conjunction with his brother 
Elias, who was soon after made senechal or stew- 
ard of Lynn for his other brother, the bishop. 
The two brothers probably used this as their 
country-house, for both of them had their chief 
occupation elsewhere ; but when the bishop 
died, in 1288, and they became not quite the 
important people they had been before, they 
sold the Lyng House to another important 
person, of whom we shall hear more by and by. 
The Lyng House, however, was not the great 
house of Rougham. I am inclined to think that 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. g 

stood not far from the spot where Rougham 
Hall now stands. It was in those days called 
the Manor House or the Manor. 



A manor six hundred years ago meant some- 
thing very different from a manor now. The 
lord was a petty king, having his subjects very 
much under his thumb, but his subjects differed 
greatly in rank and status. In the first place, 
there were those who were called the free 
tenants. The free tenants were they who lived 
in houses of their own and cultivated land of 
their own, and who made only an annual money 
payment to the lord of the manor as an acknow- 
ledgment of his lordship. The payment was 
trifling, amounting to some few pence an acre, 
at the most, and a shilling or so, as the case 
might be, for the house. This was called the 
Rent, but it is a very great mistake indeed to 
represent this as the same thing which we mean 
by rent nowadays. It really was almost identi- 
cal with what we now call, in the case of house 
property, " ground-rent," and bore no propor- 
tion to the value of the produce that might be 
raised from the soil which the tenant held. The 
free tenant was neither a yearly tenant, nor a 
leaseholder ; his holding was, to all intents and 
purposes, his own — subject, of course, to the 
payment of the ground-rent — but if he wanted 



IO HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

to sell out his holding, the lord of the manor 
enacted a payment for the privilege ; if he died, 
his heir had to pay for being admitted to his in- 
heritance, and if he died without heirs, the 
property went back to the lord of the manor. 
So much for the free tenants. Besides these 
were the villeins or villani y or natives, as they 
were called. The villeins were tillers of the 
soil, who held land under the lord, and who, 
besides paying a small money ground-rent, were 
obliged to perform certain arduous services to 
the lord, such as to plow the lord's land for so 
many days in the year, to carry his corn in the 
harvest, to provide a cart on occasion, etc. Of 
course these burdens pressed very heavily at 
times, and the services of the villeins were vexa- 
tious and irritating under a hard and unscru- 
pulous lord. But there were other serious in- 
conveniences about the condition of the villein 
or native. Qnce a villein, always a villein. A 
man or woman born in villeinage could never 
shake it off. Nay, they might not even go 
away from the manor in which they were born, 
and they might not marry without the lord's 
license, and for that license they always had to 
pay. Let a villein be never so shrewd or enter- 
prising or thrifty, there was no hope for him to 
change his state, except by the special grace of 
the lord of the manor. 1 Yes ! there was one 

1 I do not take account of those who ran away to the cor- 
porate towns. I suspect that there were many more cases of 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. II 

means whereby he could be set free, and that 
was if he could get a bishop to ordain him. 
The fact of a man being ordained at once made 
him a free man, and a knowledge of this fact 
must have served as a very strong inducement 
to young people to avail themselves of all the 
helps in their power to obtain something like an 
education, and so to qualify themselves for 
admission to the clerical order, and to the rank 
of free men. 

At Rougham there was a certain Ralph Red, 
who was one of these villeins under the lord of 
the manor, a certain William le Butler. Ralph 
Red had a son Ralph, who, I suppose, was an 
intelligent youth, and made the most of his 
brains. He managed to get ordained, about 
six hundred years ago, and he became a chaplain, 
perhaps to that very chapel of ease I mentioned 
before. His father, however, was still a villein, 
liable to all the villein services, and belonging 
to the manor and the lord, he and all his off- 
spring. Young Ralph did not like it ; and at 
last, getting the money together somehow, he 
bought his father's freedom, and, observe, with 

this than some writers allow. It was sometimes a serious in- 
convenience to the lords of manors near such towns as Nor- 
wich or Lynn. A notable example may be found in the 
" Abbrev. Placit." p. 316(6°. E. ii. Easter term). It seems that 
no less than eighteen villeins of the Manor of Cossey were 
named in a mandate to the Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, who 
were to be taken and reduced to villeinage, and their goods 
seized. Six of them pleaded they were citizens of Norwich — 
the city being about four miles from Cossey. 



12 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

his freedom the freedom of all his father's 
children too, and the price he paid was twenty 
merks. Of the younger Ralph, who bought his 
father's freedom, I know little more ; but, less 
than one hundred and fifty years after the elder 
man received his liberty, a lineal descendant of 
his became lord of the manor of Rougham ; 
and, though he had no son to carry on his name, 
he had a daughter who married a learned judge, 
Sir William Yelverton, Knight of the Bath, 
whose monument you may still see at Rougham 
Church, and from whom were descended the 
Yelvertons, Earls of Sussex, and the present 
Lord Avonmore, who is a scion of the same 
stock. 

When Ralph Red bought his father's freedom 
of William le Butler, William gave him an 
acknowledgment for the money, and a written 
certificate of the transaction, but he did not 
sign his name. In those days nobody signed 
his name, not because he could not write 
(for I suspect that just as large a proportion of 
people in England could write well six hundred 
years ago, as could have done so forty years 
ago), but because it was not the fashion to sign 
one's name. Instead of doing that, everybody 
who was a free man, and a man of substance, in 
executing any legal instrument, affixed his seal, 
and that stood for his signature. People always 
carried their seals about with them in a purse or 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 1 3 

small bag, and it was no uncommon thing for a 
pickpocket to cut off this bag and run away 
with the seal, and thus put the owner to very 
serious inconvenience. This was what actually 
did happen once to William le Butler's father- 
in-law. He was a certain Sir Richard Bellhouse, 
and he lived at North Tuddenham, near Dere- 
ham. Sir Richard was High Sheriff for the 
counties of Norfolk and Suffolk in 1291, and 
his duties brought him into court on the 25th 
of January of that year, before one of the 
Judges of Westminster. I suppose the court 
was crowded, and in the crowd some rogue cut 
off Sir Richard's purse, and made off with his 
seal. I never heard that he got it back again. 

And now I must return to the point from 
which I wandered, when I began to speak of the 
free tenants and the villeins. William le But- 
ler, who sold old Ralph Red to his own son, the 
young Ralph, was himself sprung from a family 
who had held the manor of Rougham for about 
a century. His father was Sir Richard le But- 
ler, who died about 1280, leaving behind him one 
son, our friend William, and three daughters. 
Unfortunately, William le Butler survived his 
father only a very short time, and left no child 
to succeed him. The result was that the in- 
heritance of the old knight was divided among 
his daughters, and what had been hitherto a 
single lordship became three lordships, and 



14 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

each of the parceners looking very jealously- 
after his own interest, and striving to make the 
most of his powers and rights. Though each 
of the husbands of Sir Richard le Butler's 
daughters was a man of substance and influence, 
yet, when the manor was divided, no one of 
them was any thing like so great a person as 
the old Sir Richard. In those days, as in our 
own, there were much richer men in the country 
than the country gentlemen, and in Rougham 
at this time there were two very prosperous 
men who were competing with one another as 
to which should buy up most land in the parish, 
and be the great man of the place. The one of 
these was a gentleman called Peter the Roman, 
and the other, Thomas the Lucky. They were 
both the sons of Rougham people, and it will 
be necessary to pursue the history of each of 
them to make you understand how things went 
in those " good old times." 

First let me deal with Peter the Roman. He 
was the son of a Rougham lady named Isabella, 
by an Italian gentleman named Iacomo de 
Ferentino, or, if you like to translate it into 
English, James of Ferentinum. 

How James of Ferentinum got to Rougham, 
and captured one of the Rougham heiresses we 
shall never know for certain. But we do know 
that in the days of King Henry, who was the 
father of King Edward, there was a very large 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 1 5 

incursion of Italian clergy into England, and 
that the Pope of Rome got preferment of all 
kinds for them. In fact, in King Henry's days, 
the Pope had immense power in England, and 
it looked for awhile as if every valuable piece of 
preferment in the kingdom would be bestowed 
upon the Italians who did not know a word of 
English, and who often never came near their 
livings at all. One of these Italian gentleman, 
whose name was John de Ferentino, was very 
near being made Bishop of Norwich ; he was 
Archdeacon of Norwich, but though the Pope 
tried to make him bishop, he happily did not 
succeed in forcing him into the see at that time, 
and John of Ferentinum had to content himself 
with his archdeaconry and one or two other 
preferments. Our friend at Rougham may have 
been, and probably was, some kinsman of the 
Archdeacon, and it is just possible that Arch- 
deacon Middleton, who, you remember, bought 
the Lyng House, may have had, as his predeces- 
sor in it, another Archdeacon, this John de 
Ferentino, whose nephew or brother, James, 
married Miss Isabella de Rucham, and settled 
down among his wife's kindred. Be that as it 
may, James de Ferentino had two sons, Peter 
and Richard, and it appears that their father, 
not content with such education as Oxford or 
Cambridge could afford — though at this time 
Oxford was one of the most renowned universi- 



1 6 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

ties in Europe — sent his sons to Rome, having 
an eye to their future advancement ; for, in 
King Henry's days, a young man that had 
friends at Rome was much more likely to get 
on in the world than he who had only friends in 
the King's Court, and he who wished to push 
his interests in the Church must look to the 
Pope, and not to the King of England, as his 
main support. 

When young Peter came back to Rougham, 
I dare say he brought back with him some new 
airs and graces from Italy, and I dare say the 
new fashions made people open their eyes. And 
they gave the young fellow the name he is 
known by in future, and to the day of his death 
people called him Peter Romayn, or Peter the 
Roman. But Peter came back a changed man 
in more ways than one. He came back a cleric. 
We in England now recognize only three orders 
of clergy, — bishops, priests, and deacons. But 
six hundred years ago it was very different. In 
those days a man might be two or three degrees 
below a deacon, and yet be counted a cleric and 
belonging to the clergy ; and, even though Peter 
Romayn may not have been a priest or a dea- 
con when he came back to Rougham, he was 
certainly in holy orders, and as such he was a 
privileged person in many ways, but a very un- 
privileged person in one way ; he might never 
marry. If a young fellow who had once been 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 1 7 

admitted a member of the clerical body took 
unto himself a wife, he was, to all intents and 
purposes, a ruined man. 

But when laws are pitted against human nat- 
ure, they may be forced upon people by the 
strong hand of power, but they are sure to be 
evaded, where they are not broken legally ; and 
this law forbidding clergymen to marry was 
evaded in many ways. Clergymen took to 
themselves wives, and had families. Again and 
again their consciences justified them in their 
course, whatever the Canon Law might forbid 
or denounce. They married on the sly, if that 
may be called marriage which neither the 
Church nor the State recognized as a binding 
contract, and which was ratified by no formality 
or ceremony, civil or religious : but public 
opinion was lenient ; and where a clergyman 
was living otherwise a blameless life, his people 
did not think the worse of him for having a 
wife and children, however much the Canon Law 
and certain bigoted people might give the wife 
a bad name. And so it came to pass that Peter 
Romayn of Rougham, cleric though he was, 
lost his heart one fine day to a young lady at 
Rougham, and marry he would. The young 
lady's name was Matilda. Her father, though 
born at Rougham, appears to have gone away 
from there when very young, and made money 
somehow at Leicester. He had married a Nor- 



1 8 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

folk lady, one Agatha of Cringleford ; and he 
seems to have died, leaving his widow and 
daughter fairly provided for ; and they lived in 
a house at Rougham, which I daresay Richard 
of Leicester had bought. I have no doubt that 
young Peter Romayn was a young gentleman of 
means, and it is clear that Matilda was a very 
desirable bride. But Peter could lit marry! 
How was it to be managed ? I think it almost 
certain that no religious ceremony was per- 
formed, but I have no doubt that the two 
plighted their troth either to each, and that 
somehow they did become man and wife, if not 
in the eyes of the Canon Law, yet by the sanc- 
tion of a higher law to which the consciences of 
honorable men and women appeal, against all the 
immoral enactments of human legislation. 

Among the charters at Rougham, I find 
eighteen or twenty which were executed by 
Peter Romayn and Matilda. In no one of 
them is she called his wife ; in all of them it is 
stipulated that the property shall descend to 
whomsoever they shall leave it, and in only one 
instance, and there I believe by a mistake of 
the scribe, is their any mention of their lawful 
heirs. They buy land and sell it, sometimes 
separately, more often conjointly, but in all 
cases, the interests of both are kept in view ; the 
charters are witnessed by the principal' people 
in the place, including Sir Richard Butler him- 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 1 9 

self, more than once ; and in one of the latter 
charters, Peter Romayn, as if to provide against 
the contingency of his own death, makes over 
all his property in Rougham, without reserve, 
to Matilda, and consitutes her the mistress of it 
all. 1 Some year or two after this, Matilda exe- 
cutes her last conveyance, and executes it alone. 
She sells her whole interest in Rougham — the 
house in which she lives and all that it contains 
— lands and ground-rents, and every thing else 
for money down, and we hear of her no more. 
It is a curious fact that Peter Romayn was not 
the only clergyman in Rougham whom we 
know to have been married. 

I said that the two prosperous men in Rough- 
am, six hundred years ago, were Peter Romayn 
and Thomas the Lucky, or, as his name appears 
in the Latin Charters, Thomas Felix. When 
Archdeacon Middleton gave up living at Rough- 
am, Thomas Felix bought his estate, called 
the Lyng House ; and shortly after he bought 
another estate, which, in fact, \v*as a manor of 
its own, and comprehended thirteen free tenants 
and five villeins ; and, as though this were not 
enough, on the 24th of September, 1292, he 
took a lease for another manor in Rougham for 
six years, of one of the daughters of Sir Richard 

1 By the constitutions of Bishop Woodloke, any legacies 
left by a clergyman to his " concubine " were to be handed 
over to the bishop's official, and distributed to the poor. — Wil- 
kins' " Cone." vol. ii, p. 296 b. 



20 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

le Butler, whose husband, I suppose, wanted to 
go elsewhere. Before the lease expired, he 
died, leaving behind him a widow named Sara 
and three little daughters, the eldest of whom 
cannot have been more than eight or nine years 
old. This was in the year 1294. Sara, the 
widow, was for the time a rich woman, and she 
made up her mind never to marry again, and 
she kept her resolve. When her eldest daugh- 
ter, Alice, came to the mature age of fifteen or 
sixteen, a young man named John of Thyrsford 
wooed and won her. Mistress Alice was by no 
means a portionless damsel, and Mr. John 
seems himself to have been a man of substance. 
How long they were married I know not ; but 
it could not have been more than a year or two, 
for less than five years after Mr. Felix's death, 
a great event happened, which produced very 
momentous effects upon Rougham and its in- 
habitants, in more ways than one. Up to this 
time there had been a rector at Rougham, and 
apparently a good rectory-house and some acres 
of glebe land — how many I cannot say. But 
the canons of Westacre Priory cast their eyes 
upon the rectory of Rougham, and they made 
up their minds they would have it. I dare not 
stop to explain how the job was managed — that 
would lead me a great deal too far — but it was 
managed, and accordingly, a year or two after 
the marriage of little Alice, they got possession 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 21 

of all the tithes and the glebe, and the good 
rectory-house at Rougham, and they left the 
parson of the parishwith a smaller house on the 
other side of the road, and not contiguous to 
the church, an allowance of two quarters of 
wheat and two quarters of barley a year, and 
certain small dues which might suffice to keep 
body and soul together and little more. And 
here let me observe, in passing, that there is no 
greater delusion than that of people who believe 
that the monks were the friends of the parsons. 
Whatever else they may have been, at their 
best, or at their worst, the monks were always 
the great robbers of the country parsons, and 
never lost an opportunity of pillaging them. 
But on the subject of the monasteries and their 
influence, I dare not speak now ; possibly an- 
other opportunity may occur for considering 
that subject. 

John of Thyrsford had not been married 
more than a year or two when he had enough 
of it. Whether at the time of his marriage he 
was already a cleric, I cannot tell, but I know 
that on the ioth of October, 1301, he was a 
priest, and that on that day he was instituted to 
the vicarage of Rougham, having been already 
divorced from poor little Alice. As for Alice — 
if I understand the case, she never could marry, 
however much she may have wished it ; she had 
no children to comfort her ; she became by and 



22 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

by the great lady of Rougham, and there she 
lived on for nearly fifty years. Her husband, 
the vicar, lived on too — on what terms of inti- 
macy I am unable to say. The vicar died some 
ten years before the lady. When old age was 
creeping on her she made over all her houses 
and lands in Rougham to feoffees, and I have a 
suspicion that she went into a nunnery, and 
there died. 

In dealing with the two cases of Peter Ro- 
mayn and John of Thyrsford, I have used the 
term cleric more than once. These two men 
were, at the end of their career at any rate, 
what we now understand by clergymen ; but 
there were hosts of men six hundred years ago 
in Norfolk who were clerics, and yet who were 
by no means what we now understand by cler- 
gymen. The clerics of six hundred years ago 
comprehended all those whom we now call the 
professional classes ; all, i. e., who lived by their 
brains, as distinct from those who lived by trade 
or the labor of their hands. Six hundred years 
ago it may be said that there were two kinds of 
law in England ; the one was the law of the 
land, the other was the law of the Church. The 
law of the land was hideously cruel and merci- 
less, and the gallows and the pillory, never far 
from any man's door, were seldom allowed to 
remain long out of use. The ghastly frequency 
of the punishment by death tended to make 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 2$ 

people savage and bloodthirsty. 1 It tended, 
too, to make men absolutely reckless of conse- 
quences when once their passions were roused. 
"As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb," was 
a saying that had a grim truth in it. When a 
violent ruffian knew that if he robbed his host 
in the night he would be sure to be hung for it, 
and if he killed him he could be no more than 
hung, he had nothing to gain by letting him 
live, and nothing to lose if he cut his throat. 
Where another knew that, by tampering with 
the coin of the realm he was sure to go to the 
gallows for it, he might as well make a good 
fight before he was taken, and murder any one 
who stood in the way of his escape. Hanging 
went on at a paGe which we cannot conceive, 
for in those days the criminal law of the land 
was not, as it is now, a strangely devised ma- 
chinery for protecting the wrong-doer, but it 
was an awful and tremendous power for slaying 
all who were dangerous to the persons or the 
property of the community. The law of the 
Church, on the other hand, was much more 
lenient. To hurry a man to death with his sins 
and crimes fresh upon him, to slaughter men 
wholesale for acts that could not be regarded as 
enormously wicked, shocked such as had learned 

1 In 1293 a case is recorded of three men, one of them a 
goldsmith, who had their right hands chopped off in the middle 
of the street in London. — " Chron. of Edward I. and Edward 
IT.," vol. i. p. 102. Ed. Stubbs. Rolls series. 



24 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

that the Gospel taught such virtues as mercy 
and long-suffering, and gave men hopes of for- 
giveness, on repentance. The Church set itself 
against the atrocious mangling, and branding, 
and hanging that was being dealt out blindly, 
hastily, and indiscriminately, to every kind of 
transgressor ; and inasmuch as the Church law 
and the law of the land, six hundred years ago, 
were often in conflict, the Church law acted to 
a great extent as a check upon the shocking 
ferocity of the criminal code. And this is how 
the check was exercised. A man who was a 
cleric was only half amenable to the law of the 
land. He was a citizen of the realm, and a sub- 
ject of the king, but he was more ; he owed 
allegiance to the Church, and claimed the 
Church's protection also. Accordingly, when- 
ever a cleric got into trouble, and there was only 
too good cause to believe that if he were brought 
to his trial he would have a short shrift and no 
favor, scant justice and the inevitable gallows 
within twenty-four hours at the longest, he pro- 
claimed himself a cleric, and demanded the 
protection of the Church, and was forthwith 
handed over to the custody of the ordinary, or 
bishop. The process was a clumsy one, and 
led, of course, to great abuses, but it had a good 
side. As a natural and inevitable consequence 
of such a privilege accorded to a class, there 
was a very strong inducement to become a mem- 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 2$ 

ber of that class, and as the Church made it 
easy for any fairly educated man to be admitted, 
at any rate to the lower orders of the ministry, 
any one who preferred a professional career, or 
desired to give himself up to a life of study, en- 
rolled himself among the clerics, and was hence- 
forth reckoned as belonging to the clergy. 

The country swarmed with these clerics. Only 
a small proportion of them ever became minis- 
ters of religion ; they were lawyers, or even 
lawyers' clerks ; they were secretaries ; some 
few were quacks with nostrums ; and these all 
were just as much clerics as the chaplains, who 
occupied pretty much the same position as our 
curates do now — clergymen, strictly so called, 
who were on the lookout for employment, and 
who earned a very precarious livelihood — or the 
rectors and vicars who were the beneficed clergy, 
and who were the parsons of parishes, occupying 
almost exactly the same position that they do 
at this moment, and who were almost exactly 
in the same social position as they are now. 
Six hundred years ago there were at least seven 
of these clerics in Rougham, all living in the 
place at the same time, besides John of Thyrs- 
ford, the vicar. If there were seven of these 
clerical, gentlemen whom I happen to have met 
with in my examination of the Rougham Char- 
ters, there must have been others who were not 
people of sufficient note to witness the execu- 



26 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

tion of important legal instruments, nor with 
the means to buy land or houses in the parish. 
It can hardly be putting the number too high 
if we allow that there must have been at least 
ten or a dozen clerics of one sort or another in 
Rougham six hundred years ago. How did 
they all get a livelihood ? is a question not easy 
to answer ; but there were many ways of pick- 
ing up a livelihood by these gentlemen. To 
begin with, they could take an engagement as 
tutor in a gentleman's family ; or they could 
keep a small school ; or earn a trifle by drawing 
up conveyances, or by keeping the accounts of 
the lord of the manor. In some cases they 
acted as private chaplains, getting their victuals 
for their remuneration ; and sometimes they 
were merely loafing about, and living upon their 
friends, and taking the place of the country 
parson, if he were sick or past work. 

But besides the clerics and the chaplains and 
the rector or vicar, there was another class, the 
members of which just at this time were play- 
ing a very important part indeed in the religious 
life of the people, and not in the religious life 
alone ; these were the Friars. If the monks 
looked down upon the parsons, and stole their 
endowments from them whenever they could, 
and if in return the parsons hated the monks 
and regarded them with profound suspicion and 
jealousy, both parsons and monks were united 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 2J 

in their common dislike of the Friars. Six hun- 
dred years ago the Friars. had been established 
in England about sixty years, and they were 
now by far the most influential Religionists in 
the country. It will not be far from the truth, 
and will give you the best notion of the real 
state of the case that I can offer, if I say that 
the Friars were the Primitive Methodists of six 
hundred years ago. The Friars gave out that 
their mission was to bring back Primitive Chris- 
tianity, and to reform the Church by Primitive 
Christian methods ; they were not the first people 
who have proclaimed themselves the reformers 
of their age, — not the first nor by any means the 
last. The Friars, when they began their work 
in England, were literally beggars ; they went 
from place to place, preaching Christ, the sinner's 
Saviour and the poor man's Friend ; but they 
preached almost exclusively in the large towns 
— in Yarmouth, in Lynn, in Norwich. In the 
towns, far more than in the country, the monks 
had mercilessly fleeced the clergy ; the town 
clergy, as a rule, were needy, hungry, and dis- 
pirited ; and because they were so, the poorer 
inhabitants of the towns were dreadfully neg- 
lected by the clergy, and were fast slipping 
back into mere heathenism. The Friars went 
among the miserable townsmen in their filthy 
reeking dens and cellars, visited them, minis- 
tered to them, preached to them, but they 



28 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

would take no money from them ; they would 
not even touch it with the tips of their fingers. 
As to accepting houses and lands by way of 
endowment, they lifted up their voices against 
the whole system of endowments, and declared 
it to be hateful and antichristian. They tried 
to carry out to the letter our Lord's directions 
to His disciples, when He sent them out two 
and two without silver, or gold, or brass in their 
purses, without shoes or staves, and with a 
single garment ; they lived on what people chose 
to give them, food and shelter from day to day. 
They were the earnest and enthusiastic apostles 
of the voluntary system; and, for the three hun- 
dred years that they were tolerated in England, 
they were much more true to their great princi- 
ple than has been generally supposed ; six hun- 
dred years ago they were by far the most 
influential and powerful evangelists in England 
— in fact, they were almost the only evangelists. 
The Friars, though always stationed in the 
towns, and by this time occupying large estab- 
lishments which were built for them in Lynn, 
Yarmouth, Norwich, and elsewhere, were always 
acting the part of itinerant preachers, and trav- 
elled their circuits on foot, supported by alms. 
Sometimes the parson lent them the church, 
sometimes they held a camp-meeting in spite of 
him, and just as often as not they left behind 
them a feeling of great soreness, irritation, and 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 2g 

discontent ; but six hundred years ago the 
preaching of the Friars was an immense and in- 
calculable blessing to the country, and if it had 
not been for the wonderful reformation wrought 
by their activity and burning enthusiasm, it is 
difficult to see what we should have come to, or 
what corruption might have prevailed in Church 
and State. 

When the Friars came into a village, and it 
was known that they were going to preach, you 
may be sure that the whole population would 
turn out to listen. Sermons in those days in 
the country were very rarely delivered. As I 
have said, there were no pulpits in the churches 
then. A parson might hold a benefice for fifty 
years, and never once have written or composed 
a sermon. A preaching parson, one who regu- 
larly exhorted his people or expounded to them 
the Scriptures, would have been a wonder in- 
deed, and thus the coming of the Friars, and the 
revival of pulpit oratory, was all the more wel- 
come, because the people had not become 
wearied by the too frequent iteration of truths 
which may be repeated so frequently as to lose 
their vital force. A sermon was an event in 
those days, and the preacher with any real gifts 
of oratory was looked upon as a prophet sent 
by God. 

* # ■* * * * 

Six hundred years ago no parish in Norfolk 



30 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

had more than a part of its land under tillage. 
As a rule, the town or village, with its houses, 
great and small, consisted of a long street, the 
church and parsonage being situated about the 
middle of the parish. Not far off stood the 
manor-house, with its hall where the manor 
courts were held, and its farm-buildings, dove- 
cote, and usually its mill for grinding the corn 
of the tenants. No tenant of the manor might 
take his corn to be ground anywhere except at 
the lord's mill ; and it is easy to see what a 
grievance this would be felt to be at times, and 
how the lord of the manor, if he were needy, 
unscrupulous, or extortionate, might grind the 
faces of the poor, while he ground their corn. 
Behind most of the houses in the village might 
be seen a croft or paddock, an orchard or a 
small garden. But the contents of the gardens 
were very different from the vegetables we see 
now ; there were, perhaps, a few cabbages, 
onions, parsnips, or carrots, and apparently 
some kind of beet or turnip. The potato had 
never been heard of. As for the houses them- 
selves, they were squalid enough, for the most 
part. The manor-house was often built of 
stone, when stone was to be had, or when, as in 
Norfolk, no stone was to be had, then of flint, 
as in so many of our church towers. Some- 
times, too, the manor-house was built in great 
part of timber. The poorer houses were dirty 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 3 1 

hovels, run up " anyhow," sometimes covered 
with turf, sometimes with thatch. None of 
them had chimneys. Six hundred years ago 
houses with chimneys were at least as rare as 
houses heated by hot-water pipes are now. 
Moreover, there were no brick houses. It is a 
curious fact that the art of making brick seems 
to have been lost in England for some hundreds 
of years. The laborer's dwelling had no win- 
dows ; the hole in the roof which let out the 
smoke rendered windows unnecessary, and, even 
in the houses of the well-to-do, glass windows 
were rare. In many cases oiled linen cloth 
served to admit a feeble semblance of light, and 
to keep out the rain. The laborer's fire was in 
the middle of his house ; he and his wife and 
children huddled round it, sometimes grovelling 
in the ashes ; and going to bed meant flinging 
themselves down upon the straw, which served 
them as mattress and feather-bed, exactly as it 
does to the present day in the gypsy's tent in 
our by-ways. The laborer's only light by night 
was the smouldering fire. Why should he burn 
a rush-light when there was nothing to look at ? 
And reading was an accomplishment which as 
few laboring men were masters of as now are 
masters of the art of painting a picture. As to 
the food of the majority, it was of the coarsest. 
The fathers of many a man and woman in every 
village in Norfolk can remember the time when 



32 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

the laborer looked upon wheat-bread as a rare 
delicacy ; and those legacies which were left by 
kindly people a century or two ago, providing 
for the weekly distribution of so many white 
loaves to the poor, tell us of a time when the 
poor man's loaf was as dark as mud, and as 
tough as his shoe-leather. In the winter-time 
things went very hard indeed with all classes. 
There was no lack of fuel, for the brakes and 
waste afforded turf which all might cut, and 
kindling which all had a right to carry away ; 
but the poor horses and sheep and cattle were 
half starved for at least four months in the year, 
and one and all were much smaller than they 
are now. I doubt whether people ever fatted 
their hogs as we do. When the corn was reaped, 
the swine were turned into the stubble and 
roamed about the underwood ; and when they 
had increased their weight by the feast of roots 
and mast and acorns, they were slaughtered and 
salted for the winter fare, only so many being 
kept alive as might not prove burdensome to 
the scanty resources of the people. 1 Salting 
down the animal for the winter consumption 
was a very serious expense. All the salt used 
was procured by evaporation in pans near the 

1 I take this statement from Mr. Rogers' " History of Prices," 
but I am not sure that he has taken sufficiently into account 
the reserve of fodder which the bracken and even the gorse 
would afford. In some parts of Cornwall and Devon to this 
day, animals are kept throughout the winter wholly upon this 
food. 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 33 

sea-side, and a couple of bushels of salt often 
cost as much as a sheep. This must have com- 
pelled the people to spare the salt as much as 
possible, and it must have been only too common 
to find the bacon more than rancid, and the ham 
alive again with maggots. If the salt was dear 
and scarce, sugar was unknown except to the 
very rich. The poor man had little to sweeten 
his lot. The bees gave him honey ; and long 
after the time I am dealing with, people left not 
only their hives to their children by will, but 
actually bequeathed a summer flight of bees to 
their friends ; while the hive was claimed by 
one, the next swarm would become the prop- 
erty of another. As for the drink, it was almost 
exclusively water, beer, and cider. 1 Any one 
who pleased might brew beer without tax or 
license, and anybody who was at all before the 
world did brew his own beer according to his 
own taste. But in those days the beer was very 
different stuff from that which you are familiar 
with. To begin with, people did not use hops. 
Hops were not put into beer till long after the 
time we are concerned with. I dare say they 
flavored their beer with hoarhound and other 
herbs, but they did not understand those tricks 
which brewers are said to practise nowadays for 
making the beer " heady," and sticky, and poi- 

1 On a court roll of the manor of Whissonsete, of the date 
22d July, 1355, I find William Wate fined " iiij botell cideri 
quia fecit dampnum in bladis domini." 



34 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

sonous. I am not prepared to say the beer was 
better, or that you would have liked it , but I 
am pretty sure that in those days it was easier 
to get pure beer in a country village than it is 
now, and if a man chose to drink bad beer 
he had only himself to thank for it. There 
was no such monopoly as there is now. I 
am inclined to think that there were a very 
great many more people who sold beer in 
the country parishes than sell it now, and I am 
sorry to say that the beer-sellers in those days 
had the reputation of being rather a bad lot. 1 
It is quite certain that they were very often in 
trouble, and of all the offences punished by fine 
at the manor courts none is more common than 
that of selling beer in false measures. Tobacco 
was quite unknown ; it was first brought into 
England about three hundred years after the 
days we are dealing with. When a man once 
sat himself down with his pot, he had nothing 
to do but drink. He had no pipe to take off 

1 The presentments of the beer-sellers seem to point to the 
existence of something like a licensing system among the lords 
of manors. I know not how otherwise to explain the frequen- 
cy of the fines laid upon the whole class. Thus in a court leet 
of the manor of Hockham, held the 20th of October, 1377, no 
less than fourteen women were fined in the aggregate 30J. 8d., 
who being brassatores vendidere servisiam (sic) contra assisam, 
one of these brewsters was fined as much as four shillings. 

The earliest attempt to introduce uniformity in the measures 
of ale, etc., is the assize of Richard I., bearing date the 20th 
of November, 1 197. It is to be found in *' Walter of Coventry," 
vol. ii. p. 114 (Rolls series). On the importance of this docu- 
ment see StubbV "Const. Hist." vol. i. pp. 509, 573. On the 
tasters of bread and ale cf. Dep. Keeper's 43d Report, p. 207. 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 35 

his attention from his liquor. If such a porten- 
tous sight could have been seen in those days 
as that of a man vomiting forth clouds of smoke 
from his mouth and nostrils, the beholders 
would have undoubtedly taken to their heels 
and run for their lives, protesting that the devil 
himself had appeared to them, breathing forth 
fire and flames. Tea and coffee, too, were 
absolutely unknown, unheard of ; and wine was 
the rich man's beverage, as it is now. The fire- 
waters of our own time — the gin and the rum, 
which have wrought us all such incalculable 
mischief — were not discovered then. Some lit- 
tle ardent spirits, known under the name of 
cordials, were to be found in the better-ap- 
pointed establishments, and were kept by the 
lady of the house among her simples, and on 
special occasions dealt out in thimblefuls ; but 
the vile grog, that maddens people now, our 
forefathers of six hundred years ago had never 
tasted. The absence of vegetable food for the 
greater part of the year, the personal dirt of the 
people, the sleeping at night in the clothes 
worn in the day, and other causes, made skin 
diseases frightfully common. At the outskirts 
of every town in England of any size there were 
crawling about emaciated creatures covered 
with loathsome sores, living Heaven knows how. 
They were called by the common name of lep- 
ers, and probably the leprosy strictly so called 
was awfully common. But the children must 



$6 HISTORICAL STUDIES, 

have swarmed with vermin ; and the itch, and 
the scurvy, and the ringworm, with other 
hideous eruptions, must have played fearful 
havoc with the weak and sickly. As for the 
dress of the working classes, it was hardly dress 
at all. I doubt whether the great mass of the 
laborers in Norfolk had more than a single gar- 
ment — a kind of tunic leaving the arms and 
legs bare, with a girdle of rope or leather round 
the waist, in which a man's knife was stuck, to 
use sometimes for hacking his bread, sometimes 
for stabbing an enemy in a quarrel. As for any 
cotton goods, such as are familiar to you all, 
they had never been dreamed of, and I suspect 
that no more people in Norfolk wore linen 
habitually than now wear silk. Money was 
almost inconceivably scarce. The laborer's 
wages were paid partly in rations of food, part- 
ly in other allowances, and only partly in 
money ; he had to take what he could get. 
Even the quit-rent, or what I have called the 
ground-rent, was frequently compounded for by 
the tenant being required to find a pair of 
gloves, or a pound of cummin, or some other 
acknowledgment in lieu of a money payment ; 
and one instance occurs among the Rougham 
charters of a man buying as much as eleven and 
a half acres, and paying for them partly in 
money and partly in barley. 1 Nothing shows 

1 In the year 1276 half-pence and farthings were coined for 
the first time. This must have been a great boon to the poorer 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. Z7 

more plainly the scarcity of money than the 
enormous interest that was paid for a loan. 
The only bankers were the Jews 1 ; and when a 
man was once in their hands he was never likely 
to get out of their clutches again. But six 
hundred years ago the Jews had almost come 
to the end of their tether ; and in the year 1290 
they were driven out of the country, men, 
women, and children, with unutterable barbar- 
ity, only to be replaced by other blood-suckers 
who were not a whit less mercenary, perhaps, but 
only less pushing and successful in their usury. 
It is often said that the monasteries were the 
great supporters of the poor, and fed them in 
times of scarcity. It may be so, but I should 
like to see the evidence for the statement. At 
present I doubt the fact, at any rate as far as 
Norfolk goes. 2 On the contrary, I am strongly 

classes, and it evidently was felt to be a matter of great impor- 
tance, insomuch that it was said to be the fulfillment of an 
ancient prophecy by the great seer Merlin, who had once fore- 
told in mysterious language, that " there shall be half of the 
round." In the next century it appears that the want of small 
change had again made itself felt : for in the 2d Richard II. 
we find the Commons setting forth in a petition to the King, 
that ,f . . . . Ies ditz coes, n mi petit monoye pur paier pur ft 
les petites mesures a grant damage des dites coes," and they 
beg '* Qe plese a dit Sr. le Roi et a son sage conseil de faire 
ordeiner Mayles et farthinges pur paier pur les petites mesures 
. . . . et en eovre de chatitee. . . ." — Rolls of Pari 
vol. iii. p. 65. 

1 1 am speaking of Norfolk and Suffolk, where the Jews, as 
far as I have seen, had it all their own way. 

2 The returns of the number of poor people supported by 
the monasteries, which are to be found in the " Valor Eccle- 
siasticus," are somewhat startling. Certainly the monasteries 
did not return less than they expended in alms. 



38 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

Impressed with the belief that six hundred years 
ago the poor had no friends. The parsons were 
needy themselves- In too many cases one 
clergyman held two or three livings, took his 
tithes and spent them in the town, and left a 
chaplain with a bare subsistence to fill his place 
in the country. There was no parson's wife to 
drop in and speak a kind word — no clergyman's 
daughter to give a friendly nod, or teach the 
little ones at Sunday-school — no softening in- 
fluences, no sympathy, no kindliness. What 
could you expect of people with such dreary 
surroundings? — what but that which we know 
actually was the condition of affairs? The 
records of crime and outrage in Norfolk six 
hundred years ago are still preserved, and may 
be read by any one who knows how to decipher 
them. I had intended to examine carefully the 
entries of crime for this neighborhood for the 
year 1286, and to give you the result this even- 
ing, but I have not had an opportunity of doing 
so. The work has been done for the hundred 
of North Erpingham by my friend Mr. Rye, 
*and what is true for one part of Norfolk during 
any single year is not likely to be very different 
from what was going on in another. 

The picture we get of the utter lawlessness 
of the whole country, however, at the begin- 
ning of King Edward's reign is quite dreadful 
enough. Nobody seems to have resorted to 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 39 

the law to maintain a right or redress a wrong, 
till every other method had been tried. . . . 
It really looks as if nothing was more easy than 
to collect a band of people who could be let 
loose anywhere to work any mischief. One man 
had a claim upon another for a debt, or a piece 
of land, or a right which was denied — had the 
claim, or fancied he had — and he seems to have 
had no difficulty in getting together a score or 
two of roughs to back him in taking the law 
into his own hands. As when John de la Wade 
in 1270 persuaded a band of men to help him in 
invading the manor of Hamon de Cleure, in 
this very parish of Tittleshall, seizing the corn 
and threshing it, and, more wonderful still, cut- 
ting down timber, and carrying it off. But 
there are actually two other cases of a precisely 
similar kind recorded this same year — one where 
a gang of fellows in broad day seems to have 
looted the manors of Dunton and Mileham ; 
the other case was where a mob, under the 
leadership of three men, who are named, entered 
by force into the manor of Dunham, laid hands 
on a quantity of timber fit for building pur- 
poses, and took it away bodily ! A much more 
serious case, however, occurred some years after 
this, when two gentlemen of position in Norfolk, 
with twenty-five followers, who appear to have 
been their regular retainers, and a great multi- 
tude on foot and horse, come to Little Barning- 



40 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

ham, where in the Hall there lived an old lady, 
Petronilla de Gros ; they set fire to the house in 
five places, dragged out the old lady, treated 
her with the most brutal violence, and so work- 
ed upon her fears that they compelled her to 
tell them where her money and jewels were, 
and, having seized them, I conclude that they 
left her to warm herself at the smoldering ruins 
of her mansion. 

On another occasion there was a fierce riot 
at Rainham. There the manor had become 
divided into three portions, as we have seen 
was the case at Rougham. One Thomas de 
Hanville had one portion, and Thomas de 
Ingoldesthorp and Robert de Scales held the 
other two portions. Thomas de Hanville, per- 
adventure, felt aggrieved because some rogue 
had not been whipped or tortured cruelly 
enough to suit his notions of salutary justice, 
whereupon he went to the expense of erecting 
a brand-new pillory, and apparently a gallows 
too, to strike terror into the minds of the dis- 
orderly. The other parceners of the manor 
were indignant at the act, and, collecting nearly 
sixty of the people of Rainham, they pulled 
down the pillory, and utterly destroyed the 
same. When the case came before the judges, 
the defendants pleaded in effect that if Thomas 
de Hanville had put up his pillory on his own 
domain they would have had no objection, but 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 4 1 

that he had invaded their rights in setting up 
his gallows without their permission. 

If the gentry, and they who ought to have 
known better, set such an example, and gave 
their sanction to outrage and savagery, it was only 
natural that the lower orders should be quick to 
take pattern by their superiors, and should be 
only too ready to break and defy the law. And 
so it is clear enough that they were. In a 
single year, the year 1285, in the hundred 
of North Erpingham, containing thirty-two 
parishes, the catalogue of crime is so ghastly 
as positively to stagger one. Without taking 
any account of what in those days must have 
been looked upon as quite minor offences — such 
as simple theft, sheep-stealing, fraud, extortion, 
or harboring felons — there were eleven men and 
five women put upon their trial for burglary; 
eight men and four women were murdered ; 
there were five fatal fights, three men and two 
women being killed in the frays ; and, saddest 
of all, there were five cases of suicide, among 
them two women, one of whom hanged herself, 
the other cut her throat with a razor. We 
have in the roll recording these horrors very 
minute particulars of the several cases, and we 
know too that, not many months before the 
roll was drawn up, at least eleven desperate 
wretches had been hanged for various offences, 
and one had been torn to pieces by horses for 



42 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

the crime of defacing the King's coin. It is 
impossible for us to realize the hideous ferocity 
of such a state of society as this ; the women 
were as bad as the men, furious beldames, 
dangerous as wild beasts, without pity, without 
shame, without remorse ; and finding life so 
cheerless, so hopeless, so very, very dark and 
miserable, that when there was nothing to be 
gained by killing any one else they killed them- 
selves. 

' ' Anywhere, anywhere out of the world ! " 

Sentimental people who plaintively sigh for 
the good old times will do well to ponder upon 
these facts. Think, twelve poor creatures 
butchered in cold blood in a single year within 
a circuit of ten miles from your own door ! 
Two of these unhappy victims were a couple 
of lonely women, apparently living together 
in their poverty, gashed and battered in the 
dead of the night, and left in their blood, 
stripped of their little all. The motive, too, for 
all this horrible house-breaking and bloodshed, 
being a lump of cheese or a side of bacon, and 
the shuddering creatures cowering in the corner 
of a hovel, being too paralyzed with terror to 
utter a cry, and never dreaming of making re- 
sistance to the wild-eyed assassins, who came 
to slay rather than to steal. 

Let us turn from these scenes, which are too 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 43 

painful to dwell on ; and, before I close, let me 
try and point to some bright spots in the village 
life of six hundred years ago. If the hovels of 
the laborer were squalid, and dirty, and dark, 
yet there was not — no, there was not — as much 
difference between them and the dwellings of 
the farmer class, the employers of labor. Every 
man who had any house at all had some direct 
interest in the land ; he always had some rood 
or two that he could call his own ; his allotment 
was not large, but then there were no large 
farmers. I cannot make out that there was any 
one in Rougham who farmed as much as two 
hundred acres all told. What we now under- 
stand by tenant farmers were a class that had 
not yet come into existence. When a landlord 
was non-resident he farmed his estate by a bailiff, 
and if any one wanted to give up an occupation 
for a time he let it with all that it contained. 
Thus, when Alice, the divorced, had made up her 
mind in 1318 to go away from Rougham — per- 
haps on a pilgrimage — perhaps to Rome — who 
knows ? — she let her house and land, and all 
that was upon it, live and dead stock, to her 
sister Juliana for three years. The inventory 
included not only the sheep and cattle, but the 
very hoes, and pitchforks, and sacks ; and every- 
thing, to the minutest particular, was to be 
returned without damage at the end of the 
term, or replaced by an equivalent. But this 



44 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

lady, a lady of birth and some position, certainly 
did not have two hundred acres under her hands, 
and would have been a very small personage 
indeed, side by side with a dozen of our West 
Norfolk farmers to-day. The difference be- 
tween the laborer and the farmer was, I think, 
less six hundred years ago than it is now. Men 
climbed up the ladder by steps that were more 
gently graduated ; there was no great gulf fixed 
between the employer and the employed. 

I can tell you very little of the amusements 
of the people in those days. Looking after the 
fowls or the geese, hunting for the hen's nest in 
the furze brake, and digging out a fox or a 
badger, gave them an hour's excitement or 
interest now and again. Now and then a wander- 
ing minstrel came by, playing upon his rude 
instrument, and now and then somebody would 
come out from Lynn, or Yarmouth, or Norwich, 
with some new batch of songs, for the most part 
scurrilous and coarse, and listened to much less 
for the sake of the music than for the words. 
Nor were books so rare as has been asserted. 
There were even story-books in some houses, as 
where John Senekworth, bailiff for Merton Col- 
lege, at Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire, possessed, 
when he died in 1 3 14, three books of romance ; 
but then he was a thriving yeoman, with carpets 
in his house, or hangings for the walls. 1 

1 Rogers' " Hist, of Prices," vol. i. p. 124. 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 45 

There was a great deal more coming and 
going in the country villages than there is now, 
a great deal more to talk about, a great deal 
more doing. The courts of the manor were 
held three or four times a year, and the free 
tenants were bound to attend, and carry on a 
large amount of petty business. Then there 
were the periodical visitations by the Arch- 
deacon, and the Rural Dean, and now and then 
more august personages might be seen with a 
host of mounted followers riding along the roads. 
The Bishop of Norwich was always on the move 
when he was in his diocese ; his most favorite 
places of residence were North Elmham and 
Gaywood ; at both of these places he had a 
palace and a park ; that meant that there were 
deer there and hunting, and all the good and evil 
that seems to be inseparable from haunches of 
venison. Nay, at intervals, even the Archbishop 
of Canterbury himself, the second man in the 
kingdom, came down to hold a visitation in 
Norfolk, and exactly 602 years ago the great 
Archbishop Peckham spent some time in the 
country, and between the 10th and 15th of 
January, 1281, he must have ridden through 
Rougham, with a huge train of attendants, on 
his way from Docking to Castle Acre. I have 
no doubt that his coming had very much to do 
with the separation of Peter Romayn from 
Matilda de Cringleford, and the divorce of poor 
Alice from John of Thyrsford. 



46 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

The year, 1280, in which Archbishop Peck- 
ham began his visit to Norfolk, was a very 
disastrous year for the farmers. It was the 
beginning of a succession of bad seasons and 
floods even worse than any that we have known. 
The rain set in on the 1st of August, and we 
are told that it continued to fall for twenty-four 
hours, and then came a mighty wind such as 
men had never known the like of ; the waters 
were out, and there was a great flood, and houses 
and windmills and bridges were swept away. 
Nay y we hear of a sad loss of life, and many 
poor people were drowned, and many lost their 
all ; flocks and herds, and corn and hay being 
whelmed in the deluge. In November there 
was a frightful tempest, the lightning doing ex- 
tensive damage; and just at Christmas-time the 
frost set in with such severity as no man had 
known before. The river Thames was frozen 
over above London Bridge, so that men crossed 
it with horses and carts ; and when the frost 
broke up on the 2d of February there was such 
an enormous accumulation of ice and snow that 
five of the arches of London Bridge blew up, 
and all over the country the same destruction 
of bridges was heard of. Next year and the year 
after that, things went very badly with your 
forefathers, and one of the saddest events that 
we get from a Norfolk chronicler, who was alive 
at the time, is one in which he tells us that, 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 47 

owing to the continuous rain during these three 
years, there was an utter failure in garden prod- 
uce, as well as of the people's hope of harvest. 
The bad seasons seem to have gone on for six 
or seven years ; but by far the worst calamity 
which Norfolk ever knew was the awful flood of 
1287, when by an incursion of the sea a large 
district was laid under water, and hundreds of 
unfortunate creatures were drowned in the 
dead of the night, without warning. Here, on 
the higher level, people were comparatively out 
of harm's way, but it is impossible to imagine 
the distress and agony that there must have 
been in other parts of the county not twenty 
miles from where we are this evening. After 
that dreadful year I think there was a change 
for the better, but it must have been a long 
time before the county recovered from ^the 
''agricultural distress ; " and I strongly suspect 
that the cruel and wicked persecution of the 
Jews, and the cancelling of all debts due to them 
by the landlords and the farmers, was in great 
measure owing to the general bankruptcy which 
the succession of bad seasons had brought about. 
Men found themselves hopelessly insolvent, and 
there was no other way of cancelling their obli- 
gations than by getting rid of their creditors. 
So when the king announced that all the Jews 
should be transported out of the realm, you 
may be sure there were very few Christians 



48 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

who were sorry for them. There had been a 
time when the children of Israel had spoiled the 
Egyptians — was it not fitting that another time 
should have come when the children of Israel 
should themselves be spoiled ? 

The year of the great flood was the frequent 
talk, of course, of all your forefathers who over- 
lived it, and here in this neighborhood it must 
have acquired an additional interest from the 
fact that Bishop Middleton died the year after 
it, and his brothers then parted with their 
Rougham property. Nor was this all, for 
Bishop Middleton's successor in the see of 
Norwich came from this immediate neighbor- 
hood also. This was Ralph Walpole, son of 
the lord of the manor of Houghton, in which 
parish the bishop himself had inherited a few 
acres of land. In less than forty years no less 
than three bishops had been born within five 
miles of where we are this evening : Roger de 
Wesenham, 1 who became Bishop of Lichfield in 
1245; William Middleton, who had just died; 
and Ralph Walpole, who succeeded him. 
There must have been much stir in these parts 
when the news was known. The old people 
would tell how they had seen " young master 
Ralph " many a time when he was a boy scam- 
pering over Massingham Heath, or coming to 

1 The names of several members of the bishop's family occur 
in the Rougham Charters as attesting witnesses, and a Roger 
de Wesenham is found among them more than once. 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 49 

pay his respects to the Archdeacon at the Lyng 
House, or talking of foreign parts with old 
James de Ferentino or Peter Romayn. Now 
he had grown to be a very big man indeed, and 
there were many eyes watching him on both 
sides of the water. He had a very difficult 
game to play during the eleven years he was 
Bishop of Norwich, for the king was dreadfully 
in need of money, and, being desperate, he 
resorted to outrageous methods of squeezing it 
from those whom he could frighten* and force; 
and the time came at last when the bishops and 
the clergy had to put a bold face on, and to 
resist the tyranny and lawless rapacity of the 
sovereign. 

And this reminds me that though archdea- 
cons, and bishops, and even an archbishop, in 
those days might be and were very important 
and very powerful personages, they were all 
very small and insignificant in comparison with 
the great King Edward, the king who at this 
time was looked upon as one of the most 
mighty and magnificent kings in all the world. 
He, too, paid many a visit to Norfolk six hun- 
dred years ago. He kept his Christmas at 
Burgh in 1280, and in 1284 he came down with 
the good Queen Eleanor and spent the whole of 
Lent in the country ; and next year, again, they 
were in your immediate neighborhood, mak- 
ing a pilgrimage to Walsingham. A few years 



50 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

after this the king seems to have spent a week 
or two within five miles of where we are ; he 
came to Castle Acre, and there he stayed at the 
great priory whose ruins you all know. There 
a very stirring interview took place between the 
king and Bishop Walpole, and a number of 
other bishops, and great persons who had come 
as a deputation to expostulate with the king, 
and respectfully to protest against the way in 
which he was robbing his subjects, and espe- 
cially the clergy, whom he had been for years 
plundering in the most outrageous manner. 
The king gave the deputation no smooth words 
to carry away, but he sent them off with threat- 
ening frowns and insults and in hot anger. 
Some days after this he was at Massingham, 
and one of his letters has been preserved, dated 
from Massingham, 30th of January, 1296, so 
that it is almost . certain that the great king 
passed one night there at least. It is a little 
difficult to understand what the king was doing 
at Massingham, for there was no great man 
living there, and no great mansion. Sometimes 
I have thought that the king rode out from 
Castle Acre to see what state the Walpoles of 
those times were keeping up at Houghton. 
Had not that audacious Bishop Walpole dared 
to speak plainly to his Grace the week before ? 
But the more probable explanation is that the 
king went to Massingham to visit a small 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 5 I 

religious house or monastery which had been 
recently founded there. I suspect it had al- 
ready got into debt and was in difficulties, and 
it is possible that the king's visit was made in 
the interest of the foundation. At any rate, 
there the king stayed ; but though he was in 
Norfolk more than once after this, he never was 
so near you again, and that visit was one which 
your forefathers were sure to talk about to the 

end of their lives. 

****** 

And these were the days of old. But now 
that we have looked back upon them as they 
appear through the mists of centuries, the dis- 
tance distorting some things, obscuring others, 
but leaving upon us, on the whole, an impres- 
sion that, after all, these men and women of 
the past, whose circumstances were so different 
from our own, were perhaps not so very unlike 
what we should be if our surroundings were as 
theirs. Now that we have come to that conclu- 
sion, if indeed we have come to it, let me ask 
you all a question or two. Should we like to 
change with those forefathers of ours, whose 
lives were passed in this parish, in the way I 
have attempted to describe, six hundred years 
ago ? Were the former times better than 
these ? Has the world grown worse as it has 
grown older? Has there been no progress, but 
only decline? 



52 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

My friends, the people who lived in this vil- 
lage six hundred years ago were living a life 
hugely below the level of yours. They were 
more wretched in their poverty, they were in- 
comparably less prosperous in their prosperity, 
they were worse clad, worse fed, worse housed, 
worse taught, worse tended, worse governed ; 
they were sufferers from loathsome diseases 
which you know nothing of ; the very beasts of 
the field were dwarfed and stunted in their 
growth, and I do not believe there were any 
giants in the earth in those days. The death- 
rate among the children must have been tre- 
mendous. The disregard of human life was so 
callous that we can hardly conceive it. There 
was every thing to harden, nothing to soften ; 
everywhere oppression, greed, fierceness. Judged 
by our modern standards, the people of our 
county village were beyond all doubt coarser, 
more brutal, and more wicked, than they are. 
Progress is slow, but there has been progress. 
The days that are, are not what they should 
be ; we still want reforms, we need much re- 
forming ourselves: but the former days were 
not better than these, whatever these may be ; 
and if the next six hundred years exhibit as de- 
cided an advance as the last six centuries have 
brought about, and if your children's children 
of the coming time rise as much above your 
level in sentiment, material comfort, knowledge, 



VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK. 53 

intelligence, and refinement, as you have risen 
above the level which your ancestors attained 
to, though even then they will not cease to de- 
sire better things, they will nevertheless have 
cause for thankfulness such as you may well 
feel to-night as you look back upon what you 
have escaped from, and reflect upon what you 
are. 



SIENA. 

By SAMUEL JAMES CAPPER. 

It has been truly said that every square 
league of Italian soil deserves our attention and 
study, and perhaps no part of Italy is more full 
of rich and varied human interest than the 
quondam republics of Florence, Pisa, Lucca, and 
Siena, of the last of which I propose to write in 
this article. 

Etruscan vases and other remains have at 
various times been found in and around Siena ; 
but nothing is known with certainty of its 
history, until, in the reign of Augustus, we find 
it spoken of as a Roman military colony. The 
three hills upon which it stands rise to upward 
of one thousand feet above the sea level, and 
the soil of which they are composed is doubt- 
less the product of volcanic action. Siena has 
always been subject to earthquakes, which, how- 
ever, at the worst, never did greater injury than 
the shaking down of a few chimneys. Formerly 
they recurred at intervals of forty or fifty years, 
but latterly they have been much more frequent, 
ten years rarely passing without their un- 
welcome advent. During the months of July 
54 



SIENA. 5 5 

and August of last year they occasioned great 
terror in Siena : in one day no fewer than 
seventy shocks were observed, and thousands of 
the inhabitants camped out in the squares and 
gardens, lest their houses should fall upon them. 
Scientific men tell us that the tufa upon which 
the city stands being to a great extent hollowed 
out, there is very little danger of the earth- 
quakes doing real injury; but to unscientific 
residents, the existence of this hollow space 
underneath makes the fate of Korah, Dathan, 
and Abiram seem more painfully probable than 
if solid earth were below. Be this as it may, in 
spite of the panic, no damage has actually been 
done ; and the huge masses of the churches and 
palaces show no rents or cracks, save one or two 
that are almost as venerable as the buildings 
themselves. 

Siena used to be a more favorite station for 
English residents than it now is. Before rail- 
way days, almost all visitors to Rome from the 
north passed a day or two in Siena ; now the 
railway conveys them direct from Florence, and 
the ancient little city is passed by. Those, how- 
ever, who follow the older fashion find its interest 
grow upon them, as the strain and stress of the 
nineteenth century fade from their mind and 
they gradually feel more and more at home 
among the relics of the spirit of the Middle 
Ages. 



56 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

In the short space at my disposal, it would be 
vain for me to do more than briefly glance at 
one or two interesting episodes in the history of 
this little republic, speak of some of the 
worthies it has produced (a few of whom, by the 
common consent of Christendom, have been 
deemed worthy " on fame's eternal roll-call to 
be filed "), and then describe the " Palio," the 
August festival of the city. 

In a famous passage Macaulay describes the 
wide-reaching effects of the ambition of Fred- 
erick the Great, and how, as its bitter fruit, the 
natives of Coromandel engaged in internecine 
slaughter, and red Indians scalped one another 
on the great lakes of Canada. In like manner, 
for hundreds of years, there was constant strife 
among the republics of Italy, and the flower 
of their citizens perished, either on the battle- 
field or the scaffold, because of the rivalry of 
the great factions having their origin in Ger- 
many, the Guelphs and Ghibellines. Indeed, 
the history of the Italian republics throughout 
the Middle Ages is the record of constant war- 
fare in the interest of the one or the other 
party. Without, therefore, trying to realize 
what Siena may have been when the great 
Etruscan league bore sway throughout Central 
Italy, or when, having become subject to Rome, 
the conquering legions tramped through its 
streets, on their way to Gaul, or Germany, of 



SIENA. 57 

Britain, let us come at once to the mediaeval 
history of the city, from which period the walls, 
churches, and palaces date. After the Lombard 
invasion of Italy, Siena was governed by a repre- 
sentative of the Lombard kings ; but when, in 
.800, Charlemagne destroyed, or, more properly, 
absorbed into his empire the kingdom of the 
iron crown, Siena was declared a free city. The 
lordships and baronies and rich lands he divided, 
with no niggard hand, among his warlike follow- 
ers from beyond the Alps, and some of these 
became the ancestors of the nobility of Siena. 
The soil, then, as now, rich beyond all northern 
ideas, and generous of corn, wine, and oil, soon 
rendered wealthy its fortunate possessors, who, 
no longer contented with the feudal castles on 
their estates, began to build palaces in Siena, 
and built them so solidly that now, after five or 
six centuries, they stand firm and strong as 
when erected, and there seems no reason why 
they should not bid defiance to time and earth- 
quakes for five centuries more. The feudal 
origin of these palaces, and the fact that the 
possessors derived their revenues from wide 
lordships and domains outside the city, in some 
degree account for what for a long time greatly 
puzzled me. As you walk through the old 
streets of Siena, every hundred yards, or even 
much more frequently, you come upon great 
palazzi, for the most part built of enor- 



58 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

mously solid masonry, and often of such vast size 
that you would think that each one could ac- 
commodate a whole regiment. How was it 
possible, I have often thought, for such houses 
to be erected, and the expenses of such house- 
holds to be borne in an inland city, shut out 
from the wealth derived from maritime trade, 
which made princes of the merchants of Venice, 
Genoa, and Pisa ? True the wealth of many of 
these great families is a thing of the past. I 
recently heard of a whole patrician family living 
in a portion of their huge palace, all being en- 
tirely supported out of the dowry of the wife of 
the eldest son, who was probably the daughter 
of some wealthy plebeian. Yet not one of this 
interesting family would do a hand's turn of 
work to save himself from starvation : they are 
far too sensible of what is due to themselves 
and to the honor of the family. 1 Still, it would 
be a great mistake to suppose that the patrician 
families of Siena are poor. On the contrary, 

1 With a city full of huge empty palaces, one would naturally 
suppose that strangers would be embarrassed in their choice of 
desirable furnished apartments. So I expected, and put what I 
thought a likely advertisement in a little Sienese journal, the 
Lupa. Not an answer, however, did I receive, and I am assured 
that that Sienese patrician must be poor and miserable indeed 
who would not rather see the palace of his ancestors crumble to 
ruin than resign a portion of it to the occupation of strangers. 
I have since secured an apartment in the palazzo of a noble 
family, whose history has been bound up with that of the re- 
public for centuries, and at what in England would be regarded 
as a ridiculously cheap rate, but under such peculiar circum- 
stances as in no way to militate against the above statement. 



SIENA. 59 

the most distinguished of them remain possessed 
of great estates in the country as well as of their 
stately old palaces in the city. For instance, 
the Palazzo Tolomei was built in 1205, It is an 
imposing square Gothic pile of stone, dark with 
the grime of nearly seven centuries, during 
which period the family have been leading patri- 
cians in Siena, and they still continue to occupy 
an important position in the city. The Chigis, 
Piccolominis, Bandinis, and many others, retain 
their ancient state and greatness. The Picco- 
lomini family gave two popes to Rome — 
the celebrated Eneas Sylvius who wore the 
tiara as Pius II, and his nephew, Pius III. To 
this family also belonged that Ascanius Picco- 
lomini, Archbishop of Siena, who, when the 
prison doors of the Inquisition were opened to 
Galileo, received the venerable philosopher, and 
made a home for him within the walls of the 
Archiepiscopal Palace. The persecuted philoso- 
pher seems to have been quite overcome with 
the kindness showered upon him by the arch- 
bishop, for he speaks of it in his letters as " in- 
explicable." To this family also belongs that 
Ottavio Piccolomini, whose defection from 
Wallenstein forms the subject of Schiller's 
drama. His portrait may be seen at the Palazzo 
Pubblico on a charger at full gallop in some- 
what the same truculent attitude in which 
Napoleon is popularly represented crossing the 



60 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

Alps. The Saracini family, whose massive pal- 
ace is one of the principal ornaments of the Via 
della Citta, has, during its long history, given 
one pope and many cardinals to Rome. It is, 
however, on the point of dying out, only one 
aged childless representative remaining. 

I am assured that the families who reckon 
popes among their predecessors, as for instance 
the Piccolomini, Chigi, and Saracini, date the 
greater part of their wealth and greatness from 
that time. The popes appear, as a matter of 
course, to have made use of the vast revenues 
of the Church to aggrandize their families. We 
are wont to attribute the political maxim, " To 
the victors the spoils," — which has proved so 
great a # curse to the great Transatlantic repub- 
lic, — to old General Andrew Jackson ; but, if 
the above statement be true, he took no new 
departure when he laid down the principle, but 
was following a time-honored, not to say sacred, 
precedent. An unwritten law, by which only 
the eldest son of each patrician house has been 
allowed to marry, has powerfully contributed to 
prevent the dispersion of their inherited wealth. 

From the time of Barbarossa (i 152) until 
long after the last of the Imperial House of 
Suabia, the unfortunate Conradin, had perished 
on the scaffold at Naples (in 1269), Siena was 
always intensely Ghibelline and anti-papal, al- 
though its sturdy independence showed itself, 



* uf,x,*n^ 



Ct* 



SIENA. 6 1 

even when Barbarossa was at the height of his 
power, and came, breathing out vengeance 
against the Italian free cities, determined to 
deprive them of their liberty. Siena alone had 
the courage to shut its gates in the face of the 
mighty conqueror and to dare him to do his 
worst. Frederick sent his son Henry with a 
large army which closely invested the city. 
The besieged, however, made a simultaneous 
sortie from the two gates, Fonte Branda and 
St. Marco, and, attacking the German camp at 
a place called the Rosaio, routed the Imperial- 
ists and put them to flight. But if Siena was 
Ghibelline in its politics, its great rival and 
sister republic, Florence, held by the Guelphs. 

Under the great Emperor Frederick II, the 
old quarrel between the Papacy and the Empire 
broke out with fresh fury, and involved all Italy 
in strife. Upon his death, Florence first, quick- 
ly followed by the whole of Tuscany, with the 
exception of Siena, threw off its allegiance to 
the Empire. The leaders of the Ghibelline 
party in Florence took refuge in Siena, which 
speedily led to hostilities between the two 
cities. 

To resist the victorious Guelphs, Siena had 
only the alliance of Pisa ; and the little repub- 
lic, hardly beset, sent pressing requests for 
succor to Manfred, son of the Emperor Frede- 
rick, and King of Naples. On August II, 1259, 



62 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

the king sent a reply, still preserved in the 
archives of Siena, in which he announced the 
despatch of an army sufficient to place the 
Ghibelline cause in its old position of suprem- 
acy ; but, alas ! instead of the promised army, 
only one hundred German troopers arrived. 
The mountain had brought forth a mouse, and 
things looked gloomy indeed for Siena. In this 
crisis, however, a leading Florentine exile, Fari- 
nata degli Uberth, whom Dante, a few years 
later, was to immortalize in the pages of the 
" Inferno," cheered the drooping spirits of the 
Sienese. lie said : " We have the banner of the 
king ; this will suffice to make him send us as 
many soldiers as we may require, and that with- 
out asking for them." The city was at the time 
closely invested by the Florentines. Uberti 
gave the unhappy Germans as much wine as 
they could drink, and, promising them double 
pay, persuaded them to charge the enemy's 
lines. This they did, and with incredible fury. 
The Florentines, taken by surprise, and not 
knowing what might follow this whirlwind of 
one hundred German devils, were upon the 
point of raising the siege. When, however, 
they perceived the insignificant number of their 
assailants, they summoned heart of grace, slew 
the hundred troopers to the very last man, and 
capturing the royal banner subjected it to every 
conceivable outrage. This was exactly what 



SIENA. 63 

the Mephistophelean Uberti desired. Enraged 
at the dishonor done to his standard, Manfred 
despatched eight hundred German knights, un- 
der his cousin Giordano Lancia di Angalono, to 
the help of Siena, and with the levies from Pisa 
the whole of the Ghibelline forces amounted to 
9000 horse and 18,500 foot-soldiers. 

To maintain this host was an enormous tax 
upon the city of Siena, and in order to employ 
the army, and if possible to induce the Floren- 
tines to give battle, the Sienese commanders laid 
siege to the neighboring city of Montalcino. 

The Florentines, were, however, not at all 
disposed to make easy the plans of their ene- 
mies, and obstinately remained within their 
walls. But the guile of Uberti was more than a 
match for them. With great secrecy he 
despatched two monks to the leaders of the 
people of Florence, to represent that they were 
the emissaries of the most powerful citizens of 
Siena, who, finding the tyranny of Provenzano 
Salvani 1 and Uberti insupportable, were deter- 

1 This is the Provenzano mentioned by Dante in the 
eleventh canto of the " Purgatorio " : — 

" Colui che del cammin si poco piglia 
Dinanzi a me, Toscana sono tutta 
Ed ora a pena in Siena sen pispiglia 
Ond' era sire, quando fu distrutta 
La rabbia fiorentina che superba 
Fu a quel tempo si com' ora e putta. 

Quegli e, ripose Provenzan Salvani 
Ed e qui, perche fu presuntuoso 
A recar Siena tutta alle sue mani." 



64 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

mined to deliver themselves from it at any cost. 
The messengers added that when the Floren- 
tines, under pretext of succoring Montalcino, 
should reach Siena, one of the gates of the city 
would be opened to them. Unhappily for 
Florence, her leaders believed the messengers 
and acted upon their insidious advice. The 
people of Florence rose in mass, and aid was 
demanded from the allied Guelphic cities. Bo- 
logna, Perugia, and Orvieto sent their contin- 
gents. A host of 33,000 warriors gathered 
around the Carroccio, or sacred car of Florence. 
The army marched to Monte Aperto, a few 
miles from Siena, in the full hope and expecta- 
tion that the city would soon be theirs. Tow- 
ard sunset on the 3d September (1260) the 
Sienese, after publicly invoking the aid of the 
Virgin, and dedicating their city to her, 
marched out to meet their enemies, and upon 
the following day the struggle took place. It 
was a hard-fought and long-doubtful battle, and 
it was by treachery that it was at length 
decided. Bocca degli Abati, a Ghibelline, who 
fought in the ranks of the Florentines, struck 
off, with one blow of his sword, the hand of 
Jacopo di Pazzi, who bore the standard of the 
cavalry. Fell panic seized the Florentine riders 
when they saw their banner fallen, and that 
there was treachery within their ranks, the 
extent of which they could not gauge. Each 



SIENA. 65 

man spurred his horse away from the fatal 
field, and soon the foot-soldiers were involved 
in one common rout. Then began a butchery 
which made the Arbia stream run blood. 

". . . . lo strazio e il grande scempio 
Che fece 1' Arbia colorata in rosso." 

Meanwhile, in the city of Siena, the old men, 
women, and children, together with the bishop, 
priests, and monks of all orders were assembled 
in the cathedral asking mercy of God. The 
twenty-four Signori, who then ruled Siena, 
posted a watchman on the tower of the Palazzo 
Marescotti, now the palace of the Saracini, 
whence the field of battle was distinctly visible. 
The winding road over hill and dale would make 
the distance five or six miles ; but, as a bird 
would fly, in a direct line, Monte Aperto is 
little more than three miles away. Thus, the 
watchman, a certain Cerreto Ceccolino, could 
distinctly perceive the movements of the con- 
tending armies. Terrible was the anxiety of 
the crowd of old men, women, and children at 
the base of the tower as they waited for the 
report of the combat. At length the watch- 
man strikes his drum, and, in the breathless 
pause that follows, he cries with a loud voice so 
that all may hear : " They have reached Monte 
Selvoli, and are pushing up the hill to secure it 
as a coign of vantage, and now the Florentines 



66 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

are in motion and they also are trying to gain 
the hill." 

Again the drum sounds : " The armies are 
engaged ; pray God for victory." Next the 
watchman cries : " Pray God for ours ; they 
seem to me to be getting the worst of it." 
But soon the pain and suspense of the anxious 
crowd were relieved by the watchman crying : 
" Now I see that it is the enemy who fall back." 
And now in all the joy of victory the watch- 
man beats a triumphant march, and informs 
the anxious ones below that the standards of 
Florence have all gone down, and that her 
soldiers are broken and routed, and how cruel 
a slaughter there is among them. Cruel 
slaughter, indeed ! The Carroccio, or sacred 
car of Florence, drawn by white oxen, and 
with the great standard of the city displayed 
from its lofty flag-staffs, was taken at a place 
called " Fonte al pino," close to the Arbia. 
Among its gallant defenders was a Florentine 
named Tornaquinci, with his seven sons, all of 
whom were slain. 

Consternation now fell upon the army of 
Florence. Many threw down their arms and 
cried " We surrender " ; but the chronicler adds, 
grimly, " they were not understood." A few 
of the bravest from Florence, from Lucca, and 
from Orvieto flung themselves into the castle 
of Monte Aperto, and there held out until the 



SIENA. 6y 

leaders of the army of Siena, sated with 
slaughter, admitted them to quarter. l The 
chroniclers estimate that ten thousand of the 
Guelphic host fell on this fatal field, and that 
almost all the remainder were made prisoners. 
The misery caused in Florence by the battle is 
indescribable, and in a very few years a like 
misery was to fall upon Siena. Monte Aperto 
was the last decisive victory gained by the 
Ghibelline cause. Nine years afterward, in 
1269, the Sienese army was routed at Colle, 
and exactly twenty years after that at Camp- 
aldino. 2 Nothing can be more melancholy than 
the story of the internecine fratricidal struggles 
between the cities of Italy, with their constant 
episodes of treachery and cold-blooded cruelty. 
The history of the Republic of Siena during 
the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth cent- 
uries is a long tale of anarchy and revolution, 
and of incessant struggles between the different 

1 January 10, 1883.— Yesterday I had the advantage of 
driving, with a friend, over the battle-field for a second time. 
We called at the modern villa of Monte Aperto, where resides 
Signor Canale, who most courteously pointed out to us the 
site of the ancient castle of the same name, and showed us 
exactly where the Florentine host camped on the night before 
the battle, and where the Carroccio was taken at <s Fonte al 
pino," around which stone pines still raise their lordly heads. 

2 Dante himself fought at this battle, and in the fifth canto 
of the ' ' Purgatorio " he addresses Buonconte di Montefeltro, 
mortally wounded on that field : — 

" . . . . Qual forza o qual ventura 
Ti travio si fuor di Campaldino 
Che non si seppe mai tua sepoltura? " 



68 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

parties in the State. In 1277 a law excluded 
from the supreme magistracy not only the 
patricians but the people, and decreed that for 
the future the government shoulpl rest alone in 
the hands of good " merchants loyally affected 
to the Guelph cause." This government by 
the middle classes was called the " Administra- 
tion of the Nine," and lasted for no less than 
seventy years. Though hated alike by the 
aristocracy and the people, this regime proved 
advantageous to the State. Under it the 
Palazzo Pubblico was built, and the graceful 
Mangia Tower rose, while the cathedral was 
enlarged and beautified and the city grew 
wealthy with trade. When the " Nine " fell 
before a combined assault of the aristocracy 
and the people, the republic seemed to be 
given over to anarchy. (In four months and a 
half there were no less than five revolutions.) 
Yet, strange to say, it was at this very time 
that architecture and sculpture and painting 
advanced with wondrous strides. The great 
Florentine poet told of his awful visions in the 
exquisitely beautiful language then spoken in 
Northern Italy, and crystallized into literary 
form the lovely Tuscan tongue; and against 
the black background of remorseless feuds, 
treacherous intrigues, and cruel wars, there 
stand out, white and spotless, some of the most 
perfect exemplars of sainthood into which 



SIENA. 69 

humanity has ever flowered. The Republic of 
Siena made amends for the turbulence and 
violence and bitter party spirit it had shown 
throughout its history, by the united and gal- 
lant resistance it offered to Cosimo dei Medici, 
when he determined to add the lordship of 
Siena to that of Florence, in the middle of the 
sixteenth century. Florence was in 1530 be- 
sieged and conquered by the combined arms of 
the Emperor Charles V, and Pope Clement 
VII. Siena, yielding to the traditional hatred 
of many centuries, sent some pieces of artillery 
into the imperial camp, and rejoiced greatly at 
the downfall of her ancient foe. That joy did 
not last long. Hardly was Florence his, when 
Charles determined to become possessor of 
Siena, and this, by fraud and force, he suc- 
ceeded in a few years in accomplishing. 

The better to dominate the unruly city, the 
Spaniards built a powerful fortress. Proud of 
their long self-government and jealous of their 
independence, the Sienese felt this to be intol- 
erable. They sent ambassadors to the emperor 
to implore him not to affix upon their free city 
this badge of servitude. The imperial reply 
was: "Sic volo, sic jubeo." They sent to 
Pope Julius III ; they had hope in him, for was 
not his mother, Christofana Saracini, a daughter 
of Siena ? But Julius cared more for the shame- 
ful pleasures to which he was addicted than for 



JO HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

the liberty of the country of his forefathers, and 
replied : " If one castle does not suffice his Im- 
perial Majesty to keep within bounds these hare- 
brained Sienese, why, let him build two." Re- 
jected on all hands, the Sienese took courage 
from despair. They secretly conspired, deter- 
mined to dare every thing, and on July 27, 1552, 
they rose in insurrection against their Spanish 
masters. For three days a fierce struggle raged 
throughout the city : every street, every square, 
every palace, almost every house was a battle- 
field. The struggle ended in the triumph of 
the citizens ; the Spaniards were beaten, and the 
flag of the Republic again waved from the Pa- 
lazzo Pubblico. 

The Spaniards, who had retired to the newly 
erected fortress, saw themselves compelled to 
capitulate, and no sooner did the citizens be- 
come possessed of it than they proceeded to 
raze it to the ground. Where this ill-omened 
castle stood, there is now the garden of the 
Lizza, a charming little public park, which com- 
mands very extensive views of the surrounding 
country. Thither every evening almost all Siena 
resorts to breathe fresh air and to see and be 
seen. To go back three hundred years : when 
Charles V heard of the surrender of the Spanish 
garrison he was furious, and the year 1553 saw 
a Spanish army of vengeance carrying fire and 
sword into the Sienese territory. This army 



SIENA. 71 

was checked by the unexpected and heroic re- 
sistance of the little town of Montalcino, which 
was closely invested for eighty days. But in 
the following year came another army, under 
the ferocious Marignano, and this time the 
Spaniards penetrated to the very walls of the 
city, and 25,000 Spaniards and soldiers of 
Cosimo bivouacked before the gates. All the 
citizens were called to arms, and the priests and 
monks were compelled to work on the fortifica- 
tions. 

Three ladies, named Forteguerri, Piccolomini, 
and Fausti, organized three battalions of women. 
Three thousand maidens worked on the ram- 
parts and in the trenches. The general-in-chief 
was Pietro Strozzi, a Florentine exile, and a 
bitter personal enemy of Cosimo. He deter- 
mined to relieve Siena by a coup-de-main 
against Florence. Marignano marched to pre- 
vent him. The two armies met at Marciano, 
where the Sienese suffered the crushing defeat 
of Scannagallo, caused by the treachery of the 
commander of the French cavalry in the service 
of Siena, who had been bought by Marignano 
with the price of twelve tin flasks filled with 
pieces of gold. The Sienese lost all their artil- 
lery and fifty-five banners, while 12,000 men fell, 
either killed or wounded. 

The siege now became more strict and more 
dreadful — little or no quarter was given. Fif- 



7 2 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

teen hundred peasants, caught by Marignano 
while endeavoring to take supplies into the city, 
were hanged within sight of the despairing 
citizens, so that a Spanish historian, an eye-wit- 
ness, adds : " The trees seemed to produce 
more dead bodies of men than leaves." Still 
the citizens would not yield, and they even car- 
ried their patriotism to the height of inhumanity 
to their own flesh and blood, several times turn- 
ing out of the gates hundreds of " useless 
mouths," consisting of the old, the sick, the in- 
firm, and of women and children, who either 
perished by the Spanish sword, or became the 
prey of wild beasts, or died from cold and 
hunger. Within the city, to the ravages of the 
sword and of famine were added those of 
pestilence, and at length, on the 17th of April, 
1555, Siena surrendered. Before the siege it 
numbered forty thousand inhabitants, at its 
close there remained but six thousand ; but the 
thirty-four thousand then left to be accounted 
for did not all perish in the siege, for seven 
hundred families, preferring exile to slavery, 
wandered forth into voluntary banishment. 

It is impossible not to sympathize with one's 
whole heart with a gallant little people thus pro- 
tracting a struggle for liberty and their ancient 
independence, almost to the point of extermina- 
tion, against such a ruler as Charles V, and 
such a general as Marignano ; but it is just to 



SIENA. 73 

remember that the Republic of Siena, during 
the whole of its existence, had displayed more 
and worse vices than did even the little repub- 
lics and states of ancient Greece. There was 
never an end to the cruel feuds and bitter party 
hatreds which rent asunder the city state ; 
and he who had rendered the greatest service 
to the republic was most likely to become the 
object of the envy and hatred of his fellow- 
citizens, who would often even clamor for his 
blood. Aonio Paleario, of whom I shall have 
occasion shortly to speak, thus writes of the re- 
public in 1530: "The city rises on delightful 
hills, its territory is fertile and produces every 
thing in abundance, but discord arms the 
citizens against one another, and all their 
energy is consumed in factions " ; and it is 
worthy of notice that it was unsafe for him to 
settle in Siena until the Spanish domination was, 
for the first time, firmly established after 1530. 

Upon the surrender of the republic in 1555, 
Charles V handed it over in fief to his son, 
Philip II of Spain, and he, in turn, at the 
treaty of the Chateau de Cambray (1559), made 
it over to Cosimo dei Medici, whom Italian 
historians are wont to call the Tiberius of Tus- 
cany. From that time Siena remained an in- 
tegral part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, 
until after exactly three hundred years, in 1859, 
it decided by a plebiscite, first among its sister 



74 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

cities, to place itself under the tricolor flag of 
United Italy. 

From the earliest times, and during the most 
stormy periods of its independent existence, the 
Republic of Siena was a liberal patron of the 
art of painting, and the deep religious feeling 
and tender devotional beauty of the works of 
its great masters, from the thirteenth century 
downward, still appeal to the traveller as well 
from the altars and walls of its many churches 
as in the " Instituto delle belle arti," where the 
treasures of many of the suppressed convents 
have been collected. That the love of painting 
is not dead in this one of its old haunts is 
shown by the splendid mosaics executed on the 
facade of the cathedral by Signor Luigi Mussini, 
the distinguished painter, director of the insti- 
tution just named, and by Signor Franchi, who 
is also attached to the institution. The excel- 
lence of the school of wood-carving in Siena is 
shown by the yearly increasing amount of deli- 
cate and costly work entrusted to Siena houses 
by connoisseurs of this branch of art in Eng- 
land ; and it is interesting that the whole of the 
internal woodwork on, I believe, the last Cunard 
liner was executed here. 

Few buildings in Italy, or indeed in the 
world, present a more imposing appearance 
than does the cathedral, built on the very sum- 
mit of one of the hills on which Siena stands ; 



SIENA. 75 

though it takes time to accustom the eye to the 
alternate courses of white and black marble of 
which it is built, and architectural critics find 
fault with its style. None, however, can deny 
the extraordinary richness and imposing effect 
of the interior. More even than the cathedral, 
the numerous and massive palaces, seemingly 
capable of defying all enemies, including time, 
attest the development to which architecture 
had attained in Siena in the Middle Ages. 
. In all, Siena gave nine popes to Rome, a gift 
possibly of doubtful advantage ; but of the 
benefit to Christendom of the Saints that were 
born in Siena there can be no doubt. Of these 
the greatest was Catherine, the daughter of a 
dyer, who, in her short life of thirty-three years, 
by her greatness of soul and absolute saintliness 
of character, became a power in Christendom, 
and by effecting the return of the papacy from 
Avignon to Rome, influenced, to an extent 
difficult now to estimate, the history of the 
whole world. The purity of the style of her 
letters is as remarkable as the force of her 
character and the saintliness of her life, and she 
is justly regarded, with Dante, Petrarch, and 
Boccaccio, as one of the founders of that lingua 
Toscana which has become modern Italian. 
Her life and life's work have been treated with 
such fulness and with so deep a sympathy by 
Mrs. Josephine Butler in her recent touching 



7^ HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

biography of the saint that I will say no more 
of her here. 1 

It is interesting, too, as one comes under the 
shadow of the enormous mass of the huge 
church of St. Dominic, and passes into the 
cloisters, now occupied as a studio by the 
distinguished sculptor Sarrocchi, to remember 
that this was long the abode of the " angelical 
doctor," St. Thomas of Aquinas. 

The saints of the Middle Ages gave place in 
the sixteenth century to thinkers and reformers. 
Foremost among them must be mentioned 
Lelius and Faustus Socinus, uncle and nephew. 
Born of an old and famous Sienese family, and 
descended from a series of eminent juriscon- 
sults, equally distinguished by great erudition 
and extreme conservatism, Lelius Socinus 
threw himself with such ardor into the ranks 
of the reformers as soon to distance and shock 
them. He visited, in succession, France, Eng- 
land, the Low Countries, Germany, and Poland, 
and in the end settled at Zurich, where he died, 
at the age of thirty-seven, in 1 562. His nephew, 

1 Within the last few months Monsignor Capel has been 
holding services in English in a church attached to what was 
once the house of the father of St. Catherine, for the especial 
benefit of the English in fc'iena. Far be it from any one to 
attempt to rob the Roman Catholic Church of the halo shed 
upon it by the holy life of such a saint, but it would be at least 
open to argument whether, had Catherine lived one hundred 
and fifty years later, she would not have taken her stand by the 
side of Vittoria Colonna and rejoiced in the dawn of the 
Reformation. 



SIENA. J? 

Faustus, after passing twelve years at the court 
of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, with whom he 
was a great favorite, suddenly went into volun- 
tary exile in Germany, and for the remainder of 
his life devoted himself with ardor and enthu- 
siasm to the dissemination of the views that 
had become associated with the name of his 
uncle. Maltreated and persecuted, he at length 
found a refuge near Cracow, where he died in 
1604, at the age of seventy-five. Uncle and 
nephew left behind them an enormous body of 
heterodox divinity, now never opened but by 
professed students ; but the ideas and influence 
of these two great men, received and handed 
on by later thinkers, were probably never more 
rife and potential than now, after nearly three 
centuries. 

First among the great reformers to whom 
Siena gave birth stands the majestic figure of 
Bernardino Ochino. He was born in 1487, just 
four years after Luther. He was a born saint, 
and endeavored by a life of privation and 
austerity to carry heaven by assault. He first 
joined the Franciscans, their rule of life appear- 
ing to him the most austere of any of the 
monastic orders, and when that of the Capu- 
cines seemed to him still more rigorous, he left 
the former and joined the latter. As in the 
case of Luther, then in his German monastery, 
the severest discipline and most wearing au- 



78 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

sterities could not give peace to bis soul, a 
peace which he found only in simple trust in 
the Divine mercy. 

Ochino was possessed of a wonderful elo- 
quence, which stirred men's hearts as with the 
voice of a trumpet. Since Savonarola's death 
no such potent preacher had appeared in Italy. 
Under his preaching for a charitable object at 
Naples, five thousand scudi were raised. After 
listening to him the men of Perugia promised 
to be reconciled to one another, and to forego 
the bitter hatred of centuries. Charles V, 
after hearing one of his sermons, exclaimed : 
" This man would make the very stones weep." 
A singularly noble presence, a face wasted by 
vigils and labors, with hair prematurely gray, 
and above all the knowledge of the purity and 
unaffected piety of his life, heightened the 
effect of his eloquence. He passed from city 
to city of Italy preaching, and was everywhere 
received with almost princely honors. His 
head-quarters was often in the Capucine con- 
vent, close to his native city, and the archives 
of Siena contain many letters which passed 
between him and its rulers, which show the 
strong love he always bore to his birthplace. 
He was elected General-superior of his order, 
and in 1542 he was invited to preach the Lent 
sermons in Venice. All Venice flocked to hear 
him, and the enthusiasm evoked by his elo- 



SIENA. 79 

quence knew no bounds. But the Papal Legate 
was listening to his words, and on one occasion 
rose, interrupted him, and commanded him to 
be silent in the name of the Holy Father. So 
great, however, was the popularity of Ochino, 
that three days later he was again allowed to 
enter the pulpit, and this time before even a 
larger audience. Upon reaching Verona, after 
leaving Venice, he received a summons to 
appear before the Holy Office at Rome. What 
that summons implied he well knew, and he 
determined to disobey it. There is among the 
manuscripts belonging to the library of Siena a 
letter from Ochino to Vittoria Colonna, dated 
August 22, 1542, in which he tells her that, 
having learned from his friends how pretended 
heretics are dealt with at Rome, he has resolved 
not to appear there, because he would there 
have only one of two alternatives, either to 
deny Christ, or to die in torments : " Deny 
Christ I never can," he writes ; " to die, by the 
grace of God, I am ready, as He Himself may 
dispose of me, but not to give myself volun- 
tarily into the hands of the executioners. The 
Lord will know well how to find me whereso- 
ever I may be, when He wills that my blood 
shall be shed." He decided upon leaving Italy 
forever, and a few days later, taking the road 
of Milan and Aosta, he crossed the great St. 
Bernard, and descended to Geneva, where he 



80 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

was received with open arms, and nominated 
pastor to the Italian refugees, who were begin- 
ning to flock to the city of refuge as the only 
means of escape from the clutches of the 
Inquisition. From his secure asylum upon the 
shores of Lake Leman, Ochino continued to 
hold close and affectionate correspondence with 
those like minded with himself in Italy, and 
especially in Siena, and his sermons and works, 
though prohibited and cursed by the pope, 
were widely disseminated and read throughout 
the peninsula. 

And now I must bring to a close these remi- 
niscences of illustrious Sienese, by a notice of one 
who, though not born in Siena, was for many 
years professor in its university, on which he 
conferred great honor by the lustre of his genius 
and the brilliancy of his eloquence — Aonio 
Paleario. Born at Veroli, in Southern Italy, in 
1503, he from his earliest years threw himself, 
heart and soul, into the revival of learning and 
letters, in that new birth of the intellect to 
which Europe, and Italy especially, were just 
awakening. When twenty-seven years old he 
visited Tuscany, and spent a year among like- 
minded friends of learning at Siena. Thence he 
proceeded to the University of Padua, princi- 
pally in order to attend the lectures of Lampre- 
dius on Demosthenes. Within less than a year 
he was recalled to Siena by the danger of one of 
his friends in that city, Antonio Bellanri, 



SIENA. 8 1 

The family of Bellanti had rendered the most 
signal and distinguished service to the republic, 
only, however, to be repaid by base ingratitude. 
Their palace had been pillaged by the mob, and 
Antonio himself thrown into prison on a capital 
charge based upon an obsolete law of the re- 
public which punished with death any one who 
introduced salt into the city to the detriment of 
the revenue. It is a sad illustration of the viru- 
lence of party hatred during the last years of 
the existence of the republic, that no one dared 
to undertake the defence of the accused. Pa- 
leario did not hesitate a moment, but hurried 
back to Siena, and before the Tribunal of the 
Republic, in one of the halls of the Palazzo 
Pubblico, delivered a magnificent oration in de- 
fence of his friend, — a discourse which, read 
now, after three centuries, would not seem un- 
worthy of Cicero himself. His efforts were 
crowned with success, and his friend was ac- 
quitted ; but so great was the danger that the 
successful advocate ran of assassination, that his 
friends persuaded him to leave Siena speedily 
and return to Padua. Nor did he return until 
after 1535, when the Spaniards had established 
their authority in the republic. Paleario could 
now live safely in Siena, and he gave lectures 
on philosophy and poetry, and completed his 
great poem on the Immortality of the Soul, in- 
tended to be a reply to Lucretius. He pur- 



82 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

chased the villa of Cecignano, an estate near to 
Colle which had once been the property of that 
Aulus Cecina who was defended by Cicero, and 
married. 

But Paleario was not only a poet, an orator, 
and an enthusiast for classical learning : he 
came of pious parents, among his intimate 
friends were some of the most eminent and 
pious churchmen of the day, and he longed for 
a thorough reformation of the Church without 
a schism. By degrees he awoke to the convic- 
tion that this was an impossibility ; and when 
once he clearly perceived this, his position was 
decided. Henceforth his life was a constant 
struggle against the persecution of the Friars. 
They succeeded in driving him from the Uni- 
versity of Siena, and he took refuge at Lucca, 
where he was appointed Professor of Eloquence. 
Here he remained from 1546 until 1555, in 
which year his implacable enemies compelled 
him to leave, and he repaired to Milan. He 
was constantly warned by his friends, of the 
danger of the boldness of his utterances as to 
the necessity of a reform of the Church, and that 
his only chance of safety was flight beyond the 
Alps ; but he would not heed them, and indeed 
seemed to think that his mission in the world 
was to be a confessor. At the age of sixty-six 
he was arrested in Milan by the agents of the 
Inquisition, and taken as a prisoner to Rome. 



SIENA. 83 

There he was sentenced to death on the 15th 
of October, 1569, and the sentence was carried 
into execution on the 3d of July, 1570. And 
now let us turn to a letter preserved among the 
manuscripts in the Public Library of Siena. It 
is the farewell of Paleario to his wife and chil- 
dren, and is as follows : — 

" To Marietta Paleario. 

" My Dearest Consort : — I desire that thou shouldst not 
find displeasure in my pleasure, nor evil in my good. The 
hour has come when I must pass from this life to my Lord and 
Master and God. Very joyfully do I go to the marriage 
supper of the Son of the great King, as I have ever prayed my 
Lord that of His infinite goodness and bounty He would grant 
me admittance. 

"Therefore, my beloved consort, comfort thyself in the 
will of God and in my contentment, and look well to the little 
family left in deep dismay, and bring them up and guard them 
in the fear of God, and be thou to them both father and 
mother. I am already seventy years old and useless. Our 
sons must labor with virtue and with sweat of the brow to pro- 
vide what is necessary to live honorably. May God the 
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ and the Communion of the 
Holy Spirit be with your spirits. Aonio Paleario. 

" Rome, July 3, 1570." 

With this are a few lines to his sons, Lam- 
pridio and Fedro, in which he gives some direc- 
tions about his small property. This letter thus 
begins : — 

" My most courteous lords (the Inquisitors) are not wanting 
in politeness to me to the very last, and allow me to write to 
you. It pleases God to call me to Himself by means that you 



84 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

will understand, though they will appear bitter and sharp to 
you. If, however, you consider that it is with my entire con- 
tentment and satisfaction, in order to conform myself to the 
will of God, so it ought to content you." 

It was on the evening of the 2d of July that 
eight members of the Confraternity of " San 
Giovanni decollato," a philanthropic society 
which devoted itself to rendering services to the 
condemned in the hour of death, presented 
themselves at the prison of Tordinona, and in- 
formed Paleario that he had only a few hours to 
live. They obtained permission for him to 
write the letters above quoted, and faithfully 
transmitted them to his wife at Colle. Just as 
day was breaking over the eternal city, he was 
led out to die. The scaffold was erected on the 
bridge of St. Angelo. He was strangled, and 
his body was then thrown into the flames. 
Truly, never did Christian philosopher and con- 
fessor go forth to meet his death with more 
sublime serenity. 

It may be asked, how stands it now with 
Protestantism in the city of Ochino and Paleario ? 
As in the greater part of Italy, in Spain, and 
elsewhere, the Holy Office did its work thor- 
oughly, and crushed and burned out the Refor- 
mation. So far as I know, beyond one or two 
Swiss and English, there are no Protestants in 
Siena. A very handsome Waldensian temple 
was erected in a leading boulevard near to the 



SIENA. 85 

Church of St. Dominic more than a year ago, 
and though no service has yet been held there, 
yet as a large building is now in process of con- 
struction beside it to serve as a presbytery, it 
may be hoped that the church will soon be 
opened. Occasional Waldensian services are 
now held in the house of a Swiss resident. 

But I have dwelt, I fear, too long upon the 
memory of some of those who shed lustre upon 
Siena by their genius and virtue in the past. 

The old city sits a queen upon three hills, and 
from every point in the surrounding country its 
cathedral, its towers, and walls form a picture of 
singular beauty. In its mediaeval walls, still in- 
tact and perfect, were once no fewer than thirty- 
eight gates ; of these, thirty have been closed, 
so that eight remain open. The circuit of the 
walls is seven kilometres, and they enclose an 
irregular star-shaped space, a good deal of which 
is laid out in olive-yards and gardens. Once 
Siena numbered 100,000 inhabitants ; now there 
are but 24,000. After the ravages of the plague, 
in 1348, and the last struggle for the freedom of 
the republic in 1554-5, many houses were 
razed, and the ground occupied by them was 
turned into gardens as we now see them. The 
surrounding country, as seen from the walls of 
the fortress, appears one great olive-yard and 
vineyard. The vines are either trained upon mul- 
berries or upon other trees, rarely upon olives. In 



86 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

the winter the gray, silvery sheen of the olives 
stands out against the bright red earth, which 
has given its name to " burnt Siena " ; but with 
the spring the young corn planted everywhere 
between the olives and the mulberries covers 
the ground with exquisite verdure ; and when 
the vines and other trees put out their leaves 
toward the middle of May, it is difficult to con- 
ceive of a fairer green than the country ex- 
hibits. 

In a month or six weeks all is changed ; hill 
and valley alike are golden with ripe grain, and 
as soon as the grain is harvested the land re- 
verts to its native redness, though late in the 
autumn this is relieved by some green crops, as 
welcome to the eye as they doubtless are to the 
cattle for whose sustenance they are intended. 
Last year the yield of grapes was exceptionally 
abundant, and it was curious, as one drove along 
distant country lanes, to see great purple clus- 
ters hanging by the roadside from the topmost 
branches of oaks and other trees upon which 
the vines had been trained. At this season, too, 
women and boys are to be seen up among the 
branches gathering the grapes, and the great 
white, large-horned, meek-eyed oxen draw 
primitive vans through the fields on which are the 
tubs or baskets in which the grapes are collected. 
The landscape, as seen from the walls, is occa- 
sionally relieved by groves of the stone pine and 



SIENA. Sy 

copses of oak and other trees. These latter are, 
I fear, becoming scarcer year by year, for the 
Sienese seem to have less respect for trees than 
even the Italians generally, and to have no 
compunction in cutting them down. There 
is but one exception to this sad rule, and that is 
the cypress, a grove or avenue of which every 
Italian gentleman strives to have around his 
villa. Very beautiful is its flame-like form, but 
after all not so beautiful as the oak, which no- 
where flourishes better than here in Tuscany, if 
only allowed to do so. It is painful to look at 
the denuded condition of Italy as regards wood, 1 
and then think of the magnificent forests of 
oak that have been felled within the last thirty 
years to provide sleepers for its railway system. 
To return to the view from the walls of Siena. 

1 Since this article has been in type I have heard of an 
English family who, thirty years ago, found the neighborhood 
of Siena beautifully wooded with oaks. Twenty years later 
they returned to find the greater part felled, and two years 
since nearly all were gone. Men of good position and in 
other respects sane seem afflicted with a mischievous madness, 
which shows itself in an utter hatred of trees. A few years 
back, between the outer and inner gate at Camollia, was a 
superb avenue of ilex. Every tree was felled in one year by a 
tree-hating "Sindaco," and now in this most exposed place 
there is not a particle of shade against the blazing Italian sun. 
A mile outside the city are some 6ne villas, and there used to 
be some lovely shady lanes, with fine old oaks on either side, 
through whose umbrageous foliage the hot sun could not 
penetrate. These oaks have nearly all been slaughtered, the 
proprietor having no other idea but to make what he calls a 
" campo pulito" — a clean field ; and even where along a little 
hollow flows a rivulet, erst shaded by willows, the fiat has 
gone forth, and all the trees are at this moment being felled. 
They make a desolation, and call it a " campo pulito." 



88 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

The distant hill-sides are covered with ilex and 
oak, but for the most part only scrub, as the 
charcoal-burner is always at work, and long 
before the trees have reached maturity they 
fall before the inexorable axe. These hills 
stretch away, range beyond range, into the 
distance, and in the soft waning light present 
the most exquisite shades of purple. To the 
south the wooded Monte Amiata rises to a 
height of 5,600 feet, about half way distant 
between Siena and Rome, while to the north 
the main chain of the Apennines, on the con- 
fines of Modena, rises high above the other 
hills by which the city is surrounded, and in 
winter, deep in snow, and gleaming white in the 
sunshine, presents a truly Alpine appearance. 
When you enter one of the gates of Siena, you 
pass along narrow streets, many of which are so 
steep as to be impassable to vehicles. Along 
the more level streets come lumbering country 
wains, each drawn by two milk-white oxen, 
with great branching horns, and large, soft eyes. 
The Qontadine from the surrounding district, 
with bright, handsome, wholesome faces and 
immense waving Tuscan hats, give much pict- 
uresqueness to the streets, as do the numerous 
ecclesiastics in their shovel hats and knee- 
breeches. 

In August comes the great festival of the 
city, the Palio. Its origin is lost in hoar an- 



SIENA. 89 

tiquity. In fact, there is reason to believe that 
when only the summits of the three hills upon 
which Siena sits were built upon, the inhab- 
itants used to come down to meet one an- 
other into what is now the Piazza del Campo, 
the great market-place. It is a true amphi- 
theatre, having exactly the form of an immense 
upturned cockle-shell, and probably it was once 
the crater of a volcano. Its size may be esti- 
mated by the fact that it is said to hold, and 
indeed on at least one occasion has held, as 
many as 35,000 people, though half that num- 
ber is sufficient to give it a crowded appearance. 
The principal building in the Piazza is the 
magnificent Palace of the Republic, standing 
now as strong and intact and perfect as if it had 
not witnessed the daily life, the games, and the 
life and death struggles of Siena in countless 
revolutions throughout nearly six centuries — 
for it was commenced in 1284 and finished 
about 1330. Rising gracefully by the side of 
the Palace of the Republic is the so-called 
Mangia Tower, which from every part of the 
city and for many miles around is visible, a 
miracle of lightness and strength. The Palazzo 
Pubblico, with the Mangia Tower, forms the 
diameter or base of the semicircle, and stands 
at the lowest part of the Piazza, while the 
semicircle of palaces faces it from higher 
ground in a regular amphitheatre. In remote 



90 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

times the citizens used here to celebrate a game 
called " Elmora," which was in truth more than 
a game ; it was a regular battle with sticks and 
stones and other weapons, and always caused 
the death of at least one citizen. For this, in 
1 29 1, was substituted boxing, which continued 
to be practised down to the beginning of the 
present century. But the public games of the 
" Contrade " began in 1482, in which year, for 
the first time, jousts and tourneys were held by 
them in the Piazza. From 1500 to 1599 the 
Contrade had annual bull-fights, to which each 
Contrada brought its own bull. A little fort- 
ress, too, was constructed and adorned with 
banners by each Contrada, in which the bull- 
fighters sought refuge when too closely pressed 
by the tormented animals. This cruel sport 
gave place, from 1600 to 1650, to races between 
buffaloes, each ridden by a jockey ; but as this 
also was almost always accompanied by death 
or severe wounds to some of the competitors, 
in 1650 horses were substituted for buffaloes, 
and the races have thus been run down to the 
present day. The word " Contrada " simply 
means a street or district of the city, but the 
Contrade are more than lay corporations ; each 
has a church, a distinctive banner, and special 
regulations of its own. They are probably as 
old as the republic itself. In 1328 there were 
fifty-nine of these Contrade. Thirteen ceased 



SIENA. 91 

to exist at the time of the plague, and twenty- 
three more after the siege. Six were sup- 
pressed in 1675 for having insulted the judges 
at the tourney of that year, thus leaving the 
seventeen which still remain. The Contrade 
mostly take their name from some animal, a 
picture of which is emblazoned upon their 
respective banners. These emblems are as 
follows: the tortoise (the most ancient), the 
goose, the tower, the giraffe, the conch-shell, 
the wood, the caterpillar, the wolf, the eagle, 
the owl, the wave, the dragon, the snail, the 
panther, the sheep, the unicorn, and the porcu- 
pine. Of these only ten are allowed to ruii 
horses at the Palio, the course being too narrow 
to admit of more with safety. For weeks 
before the event actually comes off the greatest 
excitement prevails throughout the city, every 
one being anxious for the success of the horse 
belonging to his or her Contrada. At length 
the great day arrives. The ten horses that are 
to run are led into the churches of their re- 
spective Contrade, and are there blessed by 
the priests. The banners of all the seventeen 
Contrade wave everywhere throughout the city. 
The people are crowded into the immense shell- 
like space of the Piazza del Campo, the centre 
of which is occupied by the spectators, as are 
tier upon tier of seats arranged against the 
ground-floor of the palaces, and also balconies 
at a higher level. 



92 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

The course is a stone pavement, about thirty 
feet wide, on the outside circumference of the 
Piazza, and exactly below the tiers of seats at 
the base of the palaces. It is now covered 
three or four inches deep with sand and earth, 
and even with this concession it seems a des- 
perate course for mortal horses to run. Not 
only are the turns short and sharp, but there 
are constant steep ascents and descents. Where 
the descending slope is steepest, near the beauti- 
ful little chapel erected hard by the Palazzo 
Pubblico, not only have boardings been freely 
erected, but they have been well padded with 
' beds and mattresses, to give if possible a soft 
reception to any unfortunate rider who may be 
spilt here. A troop of Carbineers, who, through- 
out Italy, are employed on police duty, and who 
are particularly fine men, well horsed, and with 
superb uniforms, canter round the course two 
or three times to clear it of people. 

The appearance of the Piazza during last 
year's Palio was at this moment very striking. 
An old gentleman, in one of the balconies, who 
said he was seventy-four years old, and that he 
had witnessed more than fifty Palios, estimated 
the number of people present at nearly 30,000. 
He was, of course, a laudator temporis acti, and 
thought the present show very inferior to those 
of his youth. Probably, however, the change 
was more in the spectator than in the scene. 



SIENA. 93 

The tiers of seats crowded with gayly dressed 
spectators, the bright-colored clothing of the 
crowd, the characteristic immense broad-waving 
Tuscan hats of the countrywomen, the waving 
of fans, the hum of many voices, like the roar 
of the sea when the wind drives shoreward its 
thundering breakers ; the grand old palaces 
decked out for the occasion, on whose topmost 
balconies up to the towers and roofs were 
grouped spectators ; the music of the bands, 
the roll of the drums, the waving of banners, 
the signal shots from mortars, the capering of 
the horses, and the wild joy of an entire people, 
together formed a strange and intoxicating tout 
ensemble of movement, color, and sound. The 
clusters of many-colored elastic balloons, inflated 
by the venders and floated up almost to the 
level of the roofs of the palace, were a distinct 
addition to the brightness of the scene. 

But now, in a moment, every voice is hushed 
and every neck is craned. From the street 
Casato, preceded by a band of music, appear 
the representatives of the seventeen Contrade, 
greeted by the applause of their respective 
partisans. Each Contrada is represented by 
a captain, clothed in splendid armor; two 
ensigns, who act as wavers of banners ; a first 
page, who walks by himself, carrying a banner 
on his shoulder ; a drummer and four other 
pages, all attired in the brilliant and picturesque 



94 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

fashion of the Middle Ages. Then follows the 
horse of parade, a show horse, richly capari- 
soned, bearing a rider armed cap-a-pie as a 
knight ; and, lastly, the horse that is to do the 
running, without even a saddle, and quite with- 
out ornament. Where these horses are pro- 
cured, or how selected, I do not know ; they 
must be chosen for qualities of speed or 
endurance, but they are said to be horses that, 
except on this festal day, are busy all the year 
round drawing carts and performing other hum- 
ble duties. They are little creatures and have 
a weedy appearance. The bright colors of the 
costumes of the Middle Ages, the plumes on 
the helmets, the burnished cuirasses, the rich 
caparisons of the horses, the flashing swords, 
the gracefully attired pages, the bold knights, 
the dexterous ensigns, — who, proud of their 
office, wave their banners in a thousand capri- 
cious curves, yet so that they always remain 
unfurled, and every now and again, hurl them 
into the air, catching them with wonderful 
agility, — and the captains with a grave and 
solemn air, befitting the dignity of their posi- 
tion — in short, all this wealth of costume, all 
this varied luxury of dress and of arms, carries 
even the most matter-of-fact beholder many 
centuries backward on the stream of time, to 
the days of embattled castles with moats and 
drawbridges, and of jousts and tourneys. Cer- 



SIENA. 95 

tainly our modern dress, when placed side by 
side withthat of the Middle Ages, looks mean 
and common indeed. 

As the Contrade defile past the balcony, 
where sit the judges of the course, they stop to 
salute them, to wave their banners, and to 
throw them into the air. Last comes the 
" Caroccio," or sacred war-car of the republic, 
the pride of the ancestors of those who now 
surround it, in defence of which the flower of 
the youth of Siena bled and died on many 
a hard-fought field. It is adorned with the 
standard which waved at the famous battle of 
Monte Aperto, and with the banners of all the 
Contrade of Siena. The representatives of the 
Contrade, nearly 200 in all, now range them- 
selves on tiers of seats, appropriately raised at 
the foot of the Palazza Pubblico ; and a won- 
derful picture the old palace makes, with the 
graceful Mangia Tower rising beside it, — its 
windows alive with gay and happy faces, and 
at its base a perfect parterre of bright colors, 
formed by the representatives of the Contrade. 
The roll of drums ceases, the many-colored 
banners are no longer waved, the music is 
hushed, and there only remains the murmur of 
the agitated and expectant crowd. The show 
having finished, the business of the day now 
begins. The horses that are to compete are 
ridden bare-backed. However humble their 



96 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

ordinary employment, they seem now affected 
by the general enthusiasm around them, and 
are eager for the start. Hark ! the roll of the 
drum, the report of a gun, the rope falls, and 
the ten horses are off m a wild gallop. The 
partisans of the respective Contrade are in a 
state of great excitement, and cheer their 
champions on with frantic cries. The horse 
of the " Lupo " (wolf) is a little ahead of any 
of the others ; but that of the " Torre " (tower) 
presses him hard, although the rider of the 
latter had been thrown and slightly hurt at the 
trial race in the morning. There is a sharp 
struggle between the two riders with their 
leather thongs, the horses all the time at full 
gallop, and then the horse of the " Torre " 
shoots ahead, passes the starting-point for the 
third time, and wins. The Contrada of the 
Torre is that which surrounds the Mangia 
Tower and the Palazza Pubblico, and great is 
the delight of its inhabitants. A woman begins 
to ring the bell of the chapel of the Piazza. 
The victorious rider receives the prize from the 
hands of the judges, and the flag with the date, 
glorious for him and for his Contrada, worked 
upon it. It is difficult to say whether man or 
horse is the hero of the hour ; both are greeted 
with transports of joy, and are even fondly 
embraced by both men and women. They are 
then led in triumph into a church, where a 



SIENA. 97 

priest intones the " Te Deum," amid the 
" Evvivas " of the people, for the Italians see 
nothing irreverent in this strange proceeding. 

About a fortnight after the Palio, the con- 
quering Contrada gives a dinner to the repre- 
sentatives of all the other Contrade. This year 
it took place in a narrow street at one side of 
the Palazzo Pubblico, right down the middle of 
which tables were placed. On either side the 
houses were brilliantly illuminated with tapers 
and Chinese lanterns of many colors, and of its 
kind, nothing could be more picturesque. This 
dinner takes place at 9 P. M., and lasts far into 
the night. The narrow old street, with its lofty 
houses lighted from basement to garret, with 
here a triumphal arch of evergreens, and there 
a transparency of the arms of the Contrada ; 
the interested, but most orderly citizens of 
Siena, with their wives and children, assisting 
at the banquet by walking down one side of 
the tables and up the other ; the narrow streak 
of soft blue Italian sky between the house-tops 
on either side, illuminated by a full clear moon 
which, being in the zenith, looked down upon 
the festivity ; — altogether formed a really charm- 
ing tableau. 

I am assured that there is little drunkenness, 
and not much betting on these occasions. 
Certainly I, personally, saw no drunkenness, 
nor did I hear any bets made. This is, how- 



98 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

ever, strictly negative evidence, and one would 
expect a great deal of betting in a country, 
where in every town, little and great, there is 
an office for the sale of tickets in the Govern- 
ment and Municipal Lotteries, institutions for 
national demoralization worthy only of the 
darkest of dark ages. Be this as it may, I 
never beheld a gentler or more well-behaved 
crowd, and the great Piazza was quickly 
emptied by means of the eleven streets or 
passages which open into it. 

St. Catherine speaks of the sangae dolce of 
her beloved Sienese ; and there is a feeling in 
the city that it is not consistent with this trait 
of their character that the riders at the Palio 
should be allowed to strike one another with 
their whips, a clear survival from the old days 
when the " Elmora " always counted its victims 
slain, and boxing and bull-fighting were the 
order of the day. 



A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE EIGH- 
TEENTH CENTURY. 

By FREDERIC HARRISON. 

The stormy antipathies of Thomas Carlyle 
have to answer for many a miscarriage of his- 
torical justice ; but for none more unfounded 
than that superior air with which he teaches 
the nineteenth century to sit in judgment on 
the eighteenth. " The age of prose, of lying 
of sham," said he, " the fraudulent-bankrupt 
century, the reign of Beelzebub, the peculiar era 
of Cant." And so growls on our Teufelsdrockh 
through thirty octavo volumes, from the first 
philosophy of clothes to the last hour of Fried- 
rich. 

Invectives against a century are even more 
unprofitable than indictments against a nation. 
We are prepared for them in theology, but 
they have quite gone out of serious history. 
Whatever else it may be, we may take it that 
the nineteenth century is the product of the 
eighteenth, as that was in turn the product of 
the seventeenth ; and if the Prince of Dark- 
ness had so lately a hundred years of rule in 
Europe, to what fortunate event do we owe 

99 
A-OFC. 



IOO HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

our own deliverance, and indeed the nativity of 
Thomas Carlyle ? But surely invectives were 
never more out of place, than when hurled at a 
century which was simply the turning epoch 
of the modern world, the age which gave birth 
to the movements wherein we live, and to all 
the tasks that we yet labor to solve. Look 
at the eighteenth century on all sides of its 
manifold life, free the mind from that lofty pity 
with which prosperous folks are apt to remem- 
ber their grandfathers, and we shall find it in 
achievement the equal of any century since the 
Middle Ages in promise and suggestion and 
preparation, the century which most deeply 
concerns ourselves. 

Though Mr. Carlyle seems to count it the 
sole merit of the eighteenth century to have 
provided us the French Revolution (the most 
glorious bonfire recorded in profane history), it 
is not a little curious that almost all his heroes 
in modern times, apart from Oliver Cromwell, 
are children and representatives of that unspeak- 
able epoch. Such were Friedrich, Mirabeau and 
Danton, George Washington, Samuel Johnson 
and Robert Burns, Watt and Arkwright ; and, 
for more than half of the century, and for more 
than half his work, so was Goethe himself. It 
sounds strange to accuse of unmitigated gross- 
ness and quackery the age which gave us these 
men ; and which produced, besides, " Robinson 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. IOI 

Crusoe," and the " Vicar of Wakefield," the 
" Elegy in a Church-yard," and the lines " To 
Mary," and " To my Mother's Picture," Berke- 
ley's dialogues and Burke's addresses, Reynold 
and Gainsborough, Flaxman and Stothard, Han- 
del and Mozart. But one remembers that accord- 
ing to the Teufelsdrockhian cosmogony, great 
men are dropped ab extra into their age, much 
as some philosophers assure us that protoplasm, 
or the primitive germ of life, was casually 
dropped upon our planet by a truant aerolite. 

A century which opens with the " Rape of the 
Lock," and closes with the first part of " Faust," 
is hardly a century of mere prose, especially if we 
throw in Gray, Cowper, and Burns, the " Ancient 
Mariner " and the " Lyrical Ballads." A century 
which includes twenty years of the life of 
Newton, twenty-three of Wren, and sixteen 
of Leibnitz, and the whole lives of Hume, 
Kant, Adam Smith, Gibbon, and Priestley, is 
not the age of mere shallowness ; nor is the 
century which founded the monarchy of Prus- 
sia and the empire of Britain, which gave birth 
to the republic in America and then in France, 
and which finally recast modern society and 
formed our actual habits, the peculiar era of 
quackeries, bonfires, and suicides. Measure it 
justly by the light of scientific history, and not 
by the tropes of some Biblical Saga, and it 
holds its own beside the greatest epochs in the 



102 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

modern world ; of all modern eras perhaps the 
richest, most various, most creative. It raised 
to the rank of sciences, chemistry, botany, and 
zoology ; it created the conception of social 
science and laid its foundations ; it produced 
the historical schools and the economic school 
of England and of France, the new Meta- 
physic of Germany, the new Music of Ger- 
many; it gave birth to the new poetic 
movement in England, to the new romance 
literature of England and of France, to the 
true prose literature of Europe ; it transformed 
material life by manifold inventions and arts ; 
it transformed social life no less than political 
life ; it found modern civilization in a military 
phase, it left it in an industrial phase : it found 
modern Europe fatigued, oppressed with worn- 
out forms, uneasy with the old life, uncertain 
and hopeless about the new ; it left modern 
Europe recast without and animated with a 
new soul within, burning with life, hope, and 
energy. 

The habit of treating a century as an organic 
whole, with a character of its own, is the beaten 
pathway to superficial comparison. History, 
after all, is not grouped into natural periods of 
one hundred years, as different from each other 
as the life of the son from that of his father. 
Nor, whatever, the makers of chronologies may 
say, does mankind really turn over a new page 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 103 

in the great Record, so soon as the period of 
one hundred years is complete. The genius of 
any time, even though it be in a single country, 
even in one city, is a thing too marvellously 
complex to be hit off by epithets from the Minor 
Prophets or Gargantuan anathemas and nick- 
names. And as men are not born at the begin- 
ning of a century, and do not die at the end of 
it, but grow, flourish, and decay year by year 
and hour by hour, we are ever entering on a 
new epoch and completing an old one, did we 
but know it, on the first day of every year we 
live, nay at the rising and setting of every sun. 
But, though a century be an arbitrary period, 
as purely conventional as a yard or a mile, and 
though every century has a hundred characters 
of its own, and as many lives and as many re- 
sults, we must for convenience take note of 
conventional limits, and fix our attention on 
special features as the true physiognomy of an 
epoch. History altogether is a wilderness, till 
we parcel it out into sections more or less arbi- 
trary, choosing some class of facts out of the 
myriads that stand recorded, steadily turning 
our eyes from those which do not concern our 
immediate purpose. And so, we can think of a 
century as in some sort a definite whole, in 
some sense inspired with a definite spirit, and 
leading to a set of definite results. And we are 
quite right in so doing, provided we keep a 



104 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

watchful and balanced mind, in no mechanical 
way, and in no rhetorical or moralizing mood, 
but in order to find what is general, dominant, 
and central. 

If we seek for some note to mark off the 
eighteenth from all other centuries we shall find 
it in this : it was the time of final maturing to 
the great Revolution in Europe, the mightiest 
change in all human history. By revolution we 
mean, not the blood-stained explosion and 
struggle in France which was little but one of 
its symptoms and incidents, but that resettle- 
ment of modern life common to all parts of the 
civilized world ; which was at once religious, 
intellectual, scientific, social, moral, political, 
and industrial ; a resettlement whereon the 
whole fabric of human society in the future is 
destined to rest. The era as a whole (so far 
from being trivial, sceptical, fraudulent, or sui- 
cidal) was, in all its central and highest moments, 
an era of hope, enterprise, industry, and human- 
ity ; full of humane eagerness for improvement, 
trusting human nature, and earnestly bent on 
human good. It sadly miscalculated the diffi- 
culties and risks, and it strangely undervalued 
the problems it attempted to solve with so light 
a heart. Instead of being really the decrepit 
imposture amongst the ages, it was rather the 
naif and confident youngster. The work of 
political reformation on which it engaged in a 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 105 

spirit of artful benevolence brought down on its 
head a terrible rebuff ; and it left us thereby a 
heritage of confusion and strife. But the hurly- 
burly at Versailles and the Reign of Terror are 
no more the essence of the eighteenth century, 
than the Irish atrocities and the Commune of 
Paris are the essence of the nineteenth. Polit- 
ical chaos, rebellions, and wars are at most but 
a part of a century's activity, and sometimes 
indeed but a small part. 

In the core, the epoch was hearty, manly, 
humane ; second to none in energy, mental, 
practical, and social ; full of sense, work, and 
good-fellowship. Its manliness often fattened 
into grossness ; soon to show new touches of 
exquisite tenderness. Its genius for enterprise 
plunged it into changes, and prepared for us 
evils which it little foresaw. But the work was 
all undertaken in genuine zeal for the improve- 
ment of human life. If its poetry was not of the 
highest of all orders, the century created a new 
order of poetry. If its art was on the whole 
below the average, in the noble art of music it 
was certainly supreme. In philosophy, science, 
moral and religious truth, it was second to none 
that went before. In politics it ended in a 
most portentous catastrophe. But the very 
catastrophe resulted from its passion for truth 
and reform. Nor is it easy for us now to see 
how the catastrophe could have been avoided, 



106 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

even if we see our way to avoid such catas- 
trophes again . And in such a cause it was better 
to fail in striving after the good than to perish 
by acquiescing in the evil. If one had to give 
it a name, I would rather call it the humane age 
(in spite of revolutions, wars, and fashionable 
corruption) ; for it was the era when humanity 
first distinctly perceived the possibilities and 
conditions of mature human existence. 

It would be easy enough to find scores of 
names, facts, and events to the contrary of all 
this ; but it would be quite as easy to find scores 
to the contrary of any opinion about any epoch. 
A century is a mass of contradictions by the 
necessity of the case ; for it is made up of every 
element to be found in human nature. The 
various incidents are in no way to be overlooked ; 
neither are they to be exaggerated. To balance 
the qualities of an epoch, we must analyze them 
all separately, compare them one by one, and 
then find the centre of gravity of the mass. 
England will concern us in the main ; but the 
spirit of the age can never be strictly confined 
to its action in any one country. Such move- 
ments as the Renascence in the sixteenth, or 
the Revolution in the eighteenth century, are 
especially common to Europe. It would be im- 
possible to understand the eighteenth century 
in England, if we wholly shut our eyes to the 
movements abroad of which the English phase 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 107 

was the reflex and organ. Nor must we forget 
how much our judgment of the eighteenth cent- 
ury is warped (it is obvious that Mr. Carlyle's 
was entirely formed) by literary standards and 
impressions. Literature has been deluged with 
the affectations, intrigues, savagery, and unclean- 
ness of the eighteenth century. Other centuries 
had all this in at least equal degree ; but the 
eighteenth was the first to display it in pungent 
literary form. Industry, science, invention, and 
benevolence were less tempting fields for these 
brilliant penmen. And thus an inordinate share 
of attention is given to the quarrels of poets, 
the vices of courts, and the grimacing of fops. 
It is the business of serious history to correct 
the impression which torrents of smart writing 
have "left on the popular mind. 

We are all rather prone to dwell on the follies 
and vices of that era, with which we are more 
familiar than we are with any other, almost 
more than we are with our own. It is the first 
age, since that of Augustus, which ever left 
inimitable pictures of its own daily home exis- 
tence. We recall to mind so easily the ladies of 
quality at the Spectator's routs, the rioters and 
intriguers of Hervey's memoirs, and of Wal- 
pole's, and of "the little Burney's" ; the Squire 
Westerns, the Wilkeses and the Queensberry's ; 
the Hell-fire clubs and the Rake's Progresses ; 
the political invectives of Junius and Burke; 



108 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

the Courts of St. James' and Versailles ; the 
prisons, the assizes, the parties of pleasure to 
Bedlam and to Bridewell ; the Wells at Tun- 
bridge, Bath, and Epsom ; the masquerades 
at Vauxhall and Ranelagh ; the taverns, the 
streets, the Mohawks, and the Duellists; the 
gin-drinking and the bull-baiting, the gambling 
and the swindling ; and a thousand pictures of 
social life by a crowd of consummate artists. 
Perhaps we study these piquant miniatures with 
too lively a gust. The question is not whether 
such things were, but what else there was also. 
The pure, the tender, the just, the merciful, is 
there as well, patiently toiling in the even tenor 
of its way ; and if we look for it honestly, we 
shall find it a deeper, wider, more effective force 
in the main, shaping the issue in the end for 
good. 

Addison and Steele were not the greatest of 
teachers, but they have mingled with banter 
about fans and monsters something deeper and 
finer, such as none had touched before ; some- 
thing of which six generations of moralists have 
never given us the like. " To love her was a 
liberal education." Is there a nobler or pro- 
founder sentence in our language? It is a phrase 
to dignify a nation, and to purify an age ; yet it 
was flung off by " poor Dick," one of the gayest 
wits, for one of the lightest hours of a most 
artificial society. Western, be it not forgotten, 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. IO9 

was the name not only of a boisterous fox- 
hunter, but of the most lovable woman in Eng- 
lish fiction. What a mass of manly stuff does 
our English soil seem to breed as we call up the 
creations of Fielding ! What homes of sturdy 
vigor do we enter as we turn over the pages of 
Defoe, and Swift, and Smollett, and Goldsmith, 
and Johnson ; or again in the songs of Burns, 
or the monotonous lines of Crabbe ; or in such 
glimpses of English firesides as we catch in the 
young life of Miss Edgeworth, or in our old 
friend "Sandford and Merton," or the record of 
Scott's early years, or the life of Adam Smith, 
or Bishop Berkeley ! What a world of hardi- 
hood and patience is there, in the lives of Cap- 
tain Cook, and Watt, Brindley, and Arkwright, 
Metcalfe, and Wedgwood ! What spiritual 
tenderness in the letters of Cowper, and the 
memoirs of Wesley, Howard, Wilberforce, and 
scores of hard workers, just spirits, and faithful 
hearts who were the very breath and pulse of 
the eighteenth century ! What a breeze from 
the uplands plays round those rustic images in 
all forms of art ; the art often thin and tame 
itself, but the spirit like the fragrance of new 
hay ; in such paintings as Morland's, or such 
poems as Thomson's, Beattie's, and Somer- 
ville's, or such prose as Fielding's, Goldsmith's, 
and Smollett's ! 

" How jocund did they drive their team afield ! 

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke ! " 



IIO HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

If in that mass of toiling, daring, hearty, 
simple life, we think overmuch of the riot of 
Fashion and the gossip of Courts, the fault is 
perhaps with those who look to Fashion for the 
key-note, and care more for crowds than they 
care for homes. 

A century is never, we have said, a really 
organic whole, but a group of various move- 
ments taken up and broken off at two arbitrary 
points. The eighteenth is as little a whole as 
any other ; but we may group it into parts in 
some degree thus. The first ten or fifteen years 
are clearly more akin to the seventeenth century 
than the eighteenth. Locke, Newton, and 
Leibnitz ; Wallis and Wren ; Burnet and Somers ; 
James II, Louis XIV, and William III; 
Bossuet and Fenelon lived into the century, 
and Dryden lived up to it — but none of these 
belong to it. As in French history it is best to 
take the age of Louis by itself, so in English 
history it is best to take the Whig Revolution 
by itself; for Anne is not easily parted from 
her sister, nor is Marlborough to be severed 
from William and Portland. In every sense the 
reign of Anne was the issue and crown of the 
movement of 1688, and not the forerunner of 
that of 1789. For all practical purposes, the 
eighteenth century in England means the reigns 
of the first three Georges. This space we must 
group into three periods of unequal length : — - 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUR Y. Ill 

1. From the accession of the House of Han- 
over (17 14), down to the fall of Walpole (1742). 
This is the age of Bolingbroke and Walpole ; 
Swift, Defoe, Pope, Addison, Steele, Bishop 
Berkeley, and Bishop Butler, Halley, Stephen 
Gray, and Bradley. 

2. From the fall of Walpole (1742) to the 
opening of the French Revolution (1789). It is 
the age of Chatham, of Frederick, Washington, 
and Turgot ; of Wolfe, Clive, and Hastings, 
Rodney and Anson ; of Gibbon and Robert- 
son ; of Hume and Adam Smith ; of Kant, 
Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau ; of Richard- 
son and Fielding, Sterne and Smollett, John- 
son and Goldsmith ; of Cowper and Gray, 
Thomson and Beattie ; of Reynolds and Gains- 
borough, Hogarth and Garrick ; of Cook, W T att, 
Arkwright, Brindley, Herschel, Black, Priestley, 
Hunter, Franklin, and Cavendish ; of Handel, 
Bach, Haydn, and Mozart ; of Wesley, White- 
field, Howard, and Raikes. 

This is the central typical period of the 
eighteenth century, with a note of its own ; 
some fifty years of energy, thought, research, 
adventure, invention, industry ; of good fellow- 
ship, a zest for life, and a sense of humanity. 

3. Lastly, come some twelve years of the 
Revolution (1 789-1 801) : a mere fragment of a 
larger movement that cannot be limited to any 
country or any century ; the passion and the 



112 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

strife, the hope and the foreshadowing of things 
that were to come and things that are not come. 
It is the age of Pitt, Fox, Burke, and Grattan ; 
of Cornwallis and Nelson ; of Bentham and 
Romilly, Wilberforce and Clarkson ; of Goethe 
and. Burns, Coleridge and Wordsworth; of Tel- 
ford and Stevenson ; of Flaxman, Bewick, Rom- 
ney, and Stothard ; the youth of Sir H. Davy, 
Scott, Beethoven, and Turner ; the boyhood of 
Byron and Shelley. 

It is impossible to omit this critical period 
of the century, though we too often forget that 
it forms an integral part of it, quite as truly as 
the age of Pope or the age of Johnson. The 
century is not intelligible if we cast out of it the 
mighty crisis in which it ended, to which it was 
leading all along ; or if we talk of that New 
Birth as a bonfire or a suicide. Even in art we 
are apt to forget that the century of Pope 
and Johnson it was that gave us "Faust," the 
" Ancient Mariner," " The Task," the " Lyri- 
cal Ballads," Flaxman, Stothard's, and Blake's 
delicate and weird fancies, Turner's first marine, 
Beethoven's early sonatas, and Scott's transla- 
tions from the German. All that we value as 
specially distinctive of our age lay in embryo in 
many a quiet home, whilst the struggle raged 
at its hottest on the banks of the Seine, or on 
the Rhine, the Po, and the Nile. 

When the eighteenth century opened, the 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 113 

supremacy in Europe belonged to England, as 
it has hardly ever belonged before or since. In 
William III she had one of the greatest and 
most successful of all modern statesmen, the 
one great ruler she ever had since Cromwell. 
The Revolution of 1688 had placed her in the 
van of freedom, industry, and thought. Her 
armies were led by one of the most consummate 
soldiers in modern history. Her greatest genius 
in science, her greatest genius in architecture, 
and one of her wisest spirits in philosophy, were 
in full possession of their powers ; " glorious 
John," the recognized chief of the Restoration 
poets, was but just dead, and his young rival 
was beginning to unfold his yet more consum- 
mate mastery of rhyme. The founders of Eng- 
lish prose were equipping our literature with a 
new arm, the easy and flexible style of modern 
prose ; Swift, Addison, and Defoe were the first 
to show its boundless resources, nor has any im- 
provement being added to their art. The 
nation was full of energy, wealth, and ambition ; 
and it still glowed with the sense of freedom, 
with all that it shook off in the train of the 
Stuarts. 

We should count the last days of William and 
the whole reign of Anne rather with the Revo- 
lution of 1688, of which they were the fruit, 
than with the Hanoverian period, for which they 
paved the way. And thus we may pass the 



1 .14 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

campaigns of Churchill, and the overthrow of 
Louis, and all else that was the sequel and 
corollary of the struggle with the Stuarts. On 
the other hand, when we reach the close of the 
century, England is struggling with a move- 
ment which she had only indirectly created, but 
which she was equally unable to develop or to 
guide. The characteristic period of the eigh- 
teenth century for England is that between the 
death of Anne and the great war with the Re- 
public (17 14-1793). The first fourteen years of 
the century belong to the history of the English 
Revolution : the last years to the history of the 
French Revolution. The eighty years of com- 
parative non-intervention and rest are for Eng- 
lishmen, at least, the typical years of the eigh- 
teenth century. 

It was an era of peace. Indeed it was the 
first era of systematic peace. In spite of Fon- 
tenoy and Minden, Belleisle and Quiberon Bay, 
it was the first period in our history where the 
internal welfare of the nation took recognized 
place before the interests of the dynasty, and 
its prestige in Europe. The industrial pros- 
perity of the nation, and the supreme authority 
of Parliament, were made, for the first time in 
our history, the guiding canons of the states- 
man. Walpole is the statesman of the eigh- 
teenth century ; a statesman of a solid, albeit 
a somewhat vulgar type. If history was the 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 115 

digest of pungent anecdote, it would be easy 
to multiply epigrams about the corruption of 
Walpole. Yet, however unworthy his method, 
or gross his nature, Robert Walpole created 
the modern statesmanship of England. The 
imperial Chatham in one sense developed, in 
another sense distorted, the policy of Walpole, 
much as the First Consul developed and dis- 
torted the revolutionary defence of France. 
And so the early career of William Pitt was 
a mere prolongation of the system of Walpole : 
purer in method, and more scientific in aim, 
but less efficient in result. Alas ! after ten 
glorious years as the minister of peace and of 
reform, Pitt's career and his very nature were 
transformed by that aristocratic panic which 
made him the unwilling instrument of reaction. 
But Walpole has left a name that is a symbol 
of peace, as that of Chatham and of Pitt is a 
symbol of war. And thus Walpole remains, 
with all his imperfections on his head, the 
veritable founder of our industrial statesman- 
ship, the parliamentary father of Fox, of Peel, 
of Cobden, of Gladstone. 

That industrial organization of peace by 
means of a parliamentary government was the 
true work of our eighteenth century ; for the 
European triumphs of Anne should be counted 
among the fruits of the heroic genius of William, 
and the crusade of Pitt against the Republic 



Il6 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

should be counted as a backward step of re- 
actionary panic. It was not well done by the 
statesmen of peace, that industrial organiza- 
tion of England ; it was most corruptly and 
ignobly done — but it was done. And it ended 
(we must admit) in a monstrous perversion. 
The expansion of wealth and industry which 
the peace-policy of Walpole begot, stimulated 
the nation to seek new outlets abroad, and 
led to the conquest of a vast empire. When 
the eighteenth century opened, the King of 
England ruled, outside of these islands, over 
some two or three millions at the most. 
When the nineteenth century opened, these 
two or three had become at least a hundred 
millions. The colonies and settlements in 
America and in Australia, the maritime depen- 
dencies, the Indies East and West, were mainly 
added to the Crown during the eighteenth 
century, and chiefly by the imperial policy of 
Chatham. So far as they were a genuine 
expansion of our industrial life, they are a per- 
manent honor of the age ; so far as they are 
the prizes of ambitious adventure, they were 
the reversal of the system of Walpole. It was 
Chatham, says his bombastic monument in 
Guildhall, who made commerce to flourish by 
war. It is an ignoble epitaph, though Burke 
himself composed it. But for good or for evil, 
it was the policy and the age of the two Pitts 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. WJ 

which gave England her gigantic colonial and 
maritime empire. And whether it be her 
strength and glory as many think it, or her 
weakness and burden as I hold it, it was 
assuredly one of the most momentous crises in 
the whole of our history. 

A change, at least as momentous, was ef- 
fected at home from within. The latter half 
of the eighteenth century converted our people 
from a rural to a town population, made this 
essentially a manufacturing, not an agricultural 
country, and established the factory system. 
No industrial revolution so sudden and so 
thorough can be found in the history of our 
island. If we put this transformation of active 
life beside the formation of the empire be- 
yond the seas, we shall find England swung 
round into a new world, as, in so short a time, 
has hardly ever befallen a nation. The change 
which in three generations has trebled our 
population, and made the old kingdom the mere 
heart of a huge Empire, led to portentous con- 
sequences both moral and material which were 
hardly understood till our own day. It is the 
singular boast of the nineteenth century to have 
covered this island with vast tracks of continuous 
cities and works, factories and pits ; but it was 
the eighteenth century which made this possible. 
Appalling as are many of the forms which the 
fabulous expansion of industry has taken to-day, 



Il8 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

it is too late now to deplore or resist it. The 
best hours of the twentieth century, we all trust, 
will be given to reform the industrial extrava- 
gances of the nineteenth century ; but it will be 
possible only on condition of accepting the in- 
dustrial revolution which the eighteenth century 
brought about. 

Whatever be the issue of this great change 
in English life, there can be no question about 
the sterling qualities of the men to whose genius 
and energy it was due. The whole history of 
the English race has no richer page than that 
which records those hardy mariners who with 
Cook and Anson girdled the globe ; the in- 
ventors and workers who made the roads and 
the canals, the docks and the light-houses, the 
furnaces and the mines, the machines and the 
engines ; the art-potters like Wedgwood, in- 
spired spinners like Crompton, road-makers like 
the blind Metcalfe, engineers like Smeaton, 
discoverers like Watt, canal-makers like Bridge- 
water and Brindley, engravers like Bewick, 
opticians like Dollond, inventors like Ark- 
wright. Let us follow these men into their 
homes and their workshops, watch their lives 
of indefatigable toil, of quenchless vision into 
things beyond ; let us consider their patience, 
self-denial, and faith before we call their age of 
all others that of quackery, bankruptcy, and 
fraud. We may believe it rather the age of 
science, industry and invention. 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 119 

A striking feature of those times was the 
dispersion of intellectual activity in many local 
centres, though the entire population of the 
island was hardly twice that of London to-day. 
Birmingham, Manchester, Derby, Bristol, Nor- 
wich, Leeds, Newcastle, and other towns were 
potent sources of science, art, and culture, and 
all the more vigorous that they depended little 
on the capital. A hundred years ago the popu- 
lation and extent of Birmingham were hardly 
one hundredth part of what they are now. But 
what a wealth of industry, courage, science, 
and genius in that quiet Midland village lay 
grouped round Dr. Darwin and his Lunar 
Society ; with James Watt and Matthew Boul- 
ton, then at work on their steam-engine ; and 
Murdoch, the inventor of gas-lighting ; and 
Wedgwood, the father of the Potteries ; and 
Hutton the bookseller, and Baskerville the 
printer, and Thomas Day, and Lovell Edge- 
worth : a group to whom often came Franklin, 
and Smeaton, and Black, and, in their centre 
their great philosopher and guide and moving 
spirit, the noble Joseph Priestley. Little as 
we think of it now, that group, where the in- 
domitable Boulton kept open house, was a 
place of pilgrimage to the ardent minds of 
Europe ; it was one of the intellectual cradles 
of modern civilization. And it is interesting to 
remember that our great Charles Darwin is on 



120 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

both sides the grandson of men who were lead- 
ing members of that Lunar Society, itself a 
provincial Royal Society. What forces lay 
within it ! What a giant was Watt, fit to 
stand beside Gutenberg and Columbus, as one 
of the few whose single discoveries have 
changed the course of human civilization ! 
And, if we chose one man as a type of the 
intellectual energy of the century, we could 
hardly find a better than Joseph Priestley, 
though his was not the greatest mind of the 
century. His versatility, eagerness, activity, 
and humanity ; the immense range of his 
curiosity, in all things physical, moral, or 
social ; his place in science, in theology, in 
philosophy, and in politics ; his peculiar rela- 
tion to the Revolution, and the pathetic story 
of his unmerited sufferings, may make him the 
hero of the eighteenth century. 

The strength of the century lay neither in 
politics nor in art ; it lay in the breadth of 
understanding. In political genius, in poetry, 
in art, the eighteenth was inferior to the seven- 
teenth century, and even to the sixteenth ; in 
moral, in social, and in material development 
it was far inferior to the nineteenth. But in 
philosophy, in science, in mental versatility, it 
has hardly any equal in the ages. Here, espe- 
cially, it is impossible to limit the view to one 
country. Politics, industry, and art are local. 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 121 

Science and research know nothing of country, 
have no limitations of tongue, race, or govern- 
ment. In philosophy, then, the century num- 
bers : — Leibnitz, Vico, Berkeley, Montesquieu, 
Diderot, D' Alembert, Condorcet, Kant, Turgot, 
Hume, Adam Smith. In science, it counts 
Buffon, Linnaeus, Lavoisier, Laplace, Lamarck, 
Lagrange, Halley, Herschel, Franklin, Priest- 
ley, Black, Cavendish, Volta, Galvani, Bichat, 
and Hunter. To interpret its ideas, it had 
such masters of speech as Voltaire, Rousseau, 
Swift, Johnson, Gibbon, Lessing, Goethe, and 
Burke. It organized into sciences (crystallizing 
the data till then held in solution) physics, 
chemistry, botany, zoology, comparative ana- 
tomy, electricity, psychology, and the elements 
of social science, both in history and in statics. 
It threw up these three dominant movements : 
(i) the idea of law in mind and in society, that 
is, the first postulate of mental and social sci- 
ence ; (2) that genius for synthesis of which the 
work of Buffon, of Linnaeus, and the Ency- 
clopaedia itself, were all phases ; (3) that idea 
of social reconstruction, of which the New 
Regime of '89, the American Republic, and our 
reformed Parliament are all products. The 
seventeenth century can show perhaps a list of 
greater separate names, if we add those in 
poetry, politics, and art. But for mass, result, 
multiplicity, and organic power, it may be 



122 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

doubted if any century in modern history has 
more to show than the eighteenth. 

There is this stamp upon every stroke of 
eighteenth-century work : the habit of regard- 
ing things as wholes, bearing on life as a whole. 
Their thirst for knowledge is a practical, organ- 
ic, working thing ; their minds grasp a subject 
all round, to turn it to a useful end. The ency- 
clopedic spirit animates all : with a genius for 
clearness, comprehension, and arrangement. It 
was for the most part somewhat premature, 
often impatient, at times shallow, as was much 
of the work of Voltaire, Diderot, Johnson, and 
Goldsmith. But the slightest word of such 
men has to my ear a human ring, a living voice 
that I recognize as familiar. It awakens me, 
and I am conscious of being face to face with 
an interpreter of humanity to men. When they 
write histories whole centuries glow with life ; 
we see and we hear the mighty tramp of ages. 
In twelve moderate octavos, through all which 
not a sentence could belong to any other book, 
Gibbon has compressed the history of the world 
during more than a thousand years. Is there 
in all prose literature so perfect a book as this ? 
In these days we write histories on far pro- 
founder methods ; but for the story of ten 
ordinary years Mr. Freeman and Mr. Froude 
will require a thousand pages ; and Macaulay's 
brilliant annals, we are told, needed more time 
to write than the events needed to happen. 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 23 

I often take up my Buffon. They tell us now 
that Buffon hardly knew the elements of his 
subject, and lived in the paleozoic era of science. 
It may be, but I find in Buffon a commanding 
thought, the Earth and its living races in order- 
ly relation, and in the centre Man with his 
touch of them and his contrast to them. What 
organic thought glows in every line of his ma- 
jestic scheme ! What suggestions in it, what 
an education it is in itself ! And if Buffon is 
not a man of science, assuredly he is a philoso- 
pher. No doubt, his ideas of fibres and cells 
were rudimentary, his embryology weak, and 
his histology rude ; but he had the root of the 
matter when he treated of animals as living 
organisms, and not simply as accumulations of 
microscopic particles. Now, Buffon is a typical 
worker of the eighteenth century, at its high- 
water mark of industry, variety of range, human 
interest, and organizing life. 

We may take Adam Smith, Hume, Priestley, 
Franklin ; they are four of the best types of the 
century ; with its keen hold on moral, social, 
and physical truth at once ; its genius for scien- 
tific and for social observation ; its inexhaustible 
curiosity ; and its continual sense that Man 
stands face to face with Nature. They felt the 
grand dualism of all knowledge in a way that 
perhaps we fail to grasp it with our infinity of 
special information, and a certain hankering 



124 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

after spiritualities that we doubt, and infinitesi- 
mal analyses which cease to fructify. Adam 
Smith, the first (alas ! perhaps the last) real 
economist, did not devote his life to polishing 
up a theory of rent. Astronomy, society, edu- 
cation, government, morals, psychology, lan- 
guage, art, were in turns the subject of his 
study, and in all he was master ; they all moved 
him alike, as part of man's work on earth. He 
never would have founded Political Economy 
if he had merely been an economist. And all 
this is more true of Hume, with a range even 
wider, an insight keener, a judgment riper, a 
creative method even more original. And so, 
Priestley and Franklin : as keen about gases 
and electric flashes as about the good of the 
commonwealth and the foundations of human 
belief. And when Turgot, himself one of the 
best of this band of social reformers, said of 
Franklin — 

Eripuit caelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis, 

it is true, in a wide sense, of them all, and 
especially of Turgot himself. They all sought 
to conquer the earth, as the dwelling-place of a 
reformed society of men. 

This encyclopedic, social spirit belongs to 
all alike. We recognize in all the zeal to make 
their knowledge fruitful, systematic, common to 
all, useful to man. Out of fashion as such a 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 125 

thing is to us, every sentence they utter bears 
its meaning on its face ; every book, every voy- 
age, every discovery, is hailed with eureka 
through Europe ; the voyages of travellers, or the 
surgical operation for cataract, instantly affect 
history, morals, logic, and philosophy. They can- 
not rest till every corner of the planet is explored, 
till the races of man are compared, and the 
products of the earth are stored in museums, 
classified in orders, grouped into kingdoms. 
Science and social life, nay, philosophy and 
morals were strangely transformed when the 
limits and the form of Man's Earth were first 
exactly realized. Cook and Banks, Anson and 
Bougainville, reveal to Europe the antipodes, 
and their human, brute, and vegetable worlds ; 
and every science and every art is alive with 
new ideas ; history, philosophy, morals, and 
social economy, are lit up with new laws. We 
see the same thing to-day ; but the sacred fire 
perhaps burns with a soberer flame ; the wonder 
and the sympathy are a little dulled by use ; 
and through the mountains of our materials the 
volcanic shock of a new truth is less distinctly 
felt. 

The universal human interest of these men 
throbs in every page they write. Defoe is 
politician, romancer, theologian, economist, 
pamphleteer, and philosopher. Swift is all this, 
verse-maker, and many things besides. Voltaire 



126 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

is poet, historian, critic, moralist, letter-writer, 
polemist, arbiter in science, philosophy, and art 
in general ; like Virgil's monster, with a hun- 
dred tongues and a hundred throats of brass. 
Diderot was a very encyclopedic Briareus. But 
the intense social aim comes out in all alike, 
however different in nature and taste. Cowper 
himself has it, as he sits beside his tea-urn, 
watches his hare and his spaniel, or apostro- 
phizes his sofa. Fielding clothes it with flesh 
and blood, hot blood and solid flesh ; it lights 
up the hackwork of Goldsmith, and sheds a 
fragrance forever through his lovely idyl of the 
Vicar's home ; Johnson in his arm-chair thun- 
ders it out as law to the club ; Bentham tears 
up the old Statute-book by passionate appeals 
to the greatest happiness of the greatest num- 
ber ; Burns sang for it the songs which will live 
forever in English homes ; Hogarth, the Field- 
ing of the brush, paints it ; Garrick, the most 
versatile of actors, played it ; Mozart, the most 
sympathetic of all musicians, found its melody; 
Reynolds caught every smile on its cheek, and 
the light upon its eye ; and Hume, Adam 
Smith, Priestley, and Burke sounded some of 
its deepest notes. 

Of all in this century, three men stand out, in 
three countries, as types of its vast range, of 
its organizing genius, of its hold on the reality 
behind the veil that we see: — Kant in Ger- 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 12/ 

many, Diderot in France, Hume in England. 
For us here, Hume is the dominant mind of the 
age ; with his consummate grasp of human life 
in all its moral, social, and physical conditions ; 
by his sense, good-fellowship, urbanity, and 
manliness. This was not the age of the lonely 
thinkers in their studies, as Kepler, Galileo, 
Descartes, had been. Nor was it the age of 
Bacon, Pascal, Hobbes, and Locke ; when 
philosophy was shaken by political and religious 
fanaticism. It was not the age of the wonder- 
ful specialists of our own day, when mountains 
of observation defy all attempts at system. It 
was an age more like the Revival of thought 
and learning — but with a notable difference. 
Its curiosity is as keen, its industry even great- 
er, its mental force as abundant. But it is far 
less wild ; its resources are under command, its 
genius is constructive ; and its ruling spirit is 
social. It was the second and far greater Revi- 
val — that New Birth of time whereof the first 
line was led by Galileo, Harvey, Descartes, and 
Bacon ; whereof the second line was led by 
Newton, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, Hume, and 
Kant ; whereof the third line will be led by 
those who are to come. 

In the progress of Europe,, especially in its 
mental progress, there is an incessant ebb and 
flow, a continual give and take. The intellec- 
tual lead passes from one to the other, qualified 



128 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

and modified by each great individual genius. 
In the sixteenth century it was Spain and 
Italy, in the seventeenth it was Holland and 
England, in the eighteenth it was France, and 
now perhaps it is Germany, which sets the tone, 
or fashion, in thought. For the first genera- 
tion perhaps of the eighteenth century, England 
had the lead which Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, 
Hobbes, Locke, Harvey, Cromwell, and Will- 
iam, had given her in the century preceding. 
The contemporaries of Newton, Locke, Dryden, 
Pope, Swift, Defoe, and Addison, were a force 
in combination which the worshippers of Louis 
the Fourteenth did not immediately perceive, 
but which was above any thing then extant in 
Europe. The revelation of this great intellect- 
ual strength in England was made by Montes- 
quieu and Voltaire. Voltaire, if not exactly a 
thinker, was the greatest interpreter of ideas 
whom the world has ever seen ; and became the 
greatest literary power in the whole history of 
letters. When in 1728 he took back to France 
his English experience and studies, he carried 
with him the sacred fire of freedom whereby 
the supremacy of thought began to pass to 
France. Within ten years that fire lit up some 
of the greatest beacons of the modern world. 
Voltaire wrote his " Essay on Manners " in 
1740; Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Laws" 
appeared in 1748, and its influence was greater 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 29 

than that of any single work of Voltaire. The 
forty years, 1740- 1780, were perhaps the most 
pregnant epoch in the history of human thought. 
It contained the works of Voltaire, Montesquieu, 
Diderot, D'Alembert, Vauvenargues, Buffon, 
Lavoisier, Rousseau, the encyclopedists, Con- 
dorcet, and Turgot in France ; and, in England, 
those of Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Gibbon, 
Robertson, Hume, Adam Smith, Priestley, 
Johnson, Goldsmith, and Gray. During the 
last twenty years of the century France was 
absorbed in her tremendous Revolution, and 
again the supremacy in literature passed away 
from her to give to Germany Kant, Hegel, 
Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven ; to give to Eng- 
land Burke, Bentham, Cowper, Burns, Byron, 
Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Scott. So 
sways the battle of ideas from age to age and 
from shore to shore. 

This is not the place to discuss the vast move- 
ment of the human mind which is loosely called 
the Revolution. As an Oxford wit used to say : 
" To sit in judgment on the Revolution is like 
asking if the Fall of Man were a justifiable pro- 
ceeding." Our judgment on all this depends 
on the bent of our minds in theology, philos- 
ophy, and politics. One who holds on to his 
Bible chiefly for its damnatory resources has 
assured us that this was the Satanic Age. If 
we look at its achievements, one is tempted to 



130 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

wish that our own age were more often visited 
by that accomplished gentleman. The century 
completely transformed all that had previously 
been known as to heat, gases, metals, electricity, 
plants, animals, tissues, diseases, geography, 
geology, the races, products and form of the 
earth, psychology, chronology, history, political 
and social and economic science. It would take 
a volume to enlarge on these. One can but 
give the names of those departments of knowl- 
edge. Compare the anatomical resources of Dr. 
Radcliffe with those of Hunter, Bichat, and Du- 
puytren ; the chemical and physical notions of 
Boyle with those of Davy, Volta, and Galvani ; 
the physiology of Boerhaave with that of La- 
marck ; compare the classifkatory notions of 
Ray with those of Buffon, Linnaeus, and Cuvier ; 
take the ideas on society of Hobbes or Harring- 
ton, and compare them with those of Hume, A. 
Smith, Burke, and Bentham ; compare Gibbon's 
idea of history with that of Raleigh, Bacon, 
Milton. Compare the psychology of Kant with 
that of Descartes or Locke ; — and we see that 
the century made a stride, not as we have done 
by enlarging the sciences, but in creating them 
or turning their rudiments into mature or- 
ganisms. 

The weak side of the century was certainly in 
beauty ; in poetry, and the arts of form. It 
was essentially the age of prose ; but still it was 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 131 

not prosaic. Its imaginative genius spoke in 
prose and not in verse. There is more poetry 
in the " Vicar of Wakefield " than in the " De- 
serted Village," in " Tom Jones " than in Pope's 
" Iliad," and the death of Clarissa Harlowe is 
more like Sophocles than the death of Addison's 
Cato. The age did not do well in verse ; but if 
its verse tended to prose, its prose ever tended 
to rise into poetry. We want some word (Mr. 
Matthew Arnold will not let us use the word 
poetry) to express the imaginative power at 
work in prose, saturating it with the fragrance 
of proportion and form, shedding over the whole 
that indefinable charm of subtle suggestion, 
which belongs to rare thoughts clothed in per- 
fect words. For my part, I find " the vision and 
the faculty divine " in the inexhaustible vivacity 
of " Tom Jones," in the mysterious realism of 
" Robinson Crusoe," in the terrible tension of 
Clarissa's tragedy, in the idyllic grace of the 
Vicar's home. This imaginative force has never 
since been reached in prose save by Walter 
Scott himself, and not even by him in such in- 
imitable witchery of words. If it be not poetry, 
it is quite unlike the prose that we read or write 
to-day. 

Besides, one cannot allow that there is no 
poetry in the century. Let us give a liberal 
meaning to poetry ; and where we find creative 
fancy, charm of phrase, the vivid tone of a dis- 



132 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

tinct voice that we could recognize in a thou- 
sand — there, we are sure, is the poet. For my 
part, I go so far as to admit that to be poetry 
which is quite intelligible, even if it have no 
subtlety, mystery, or inner meaning at all. 
Much as I prefer Shelley, I will not deny that 
Pope is a poet. Tennyson perhaps would never 
have run so near commonplace as do stanzas 
here and there in the famous " Elegy," but does 
any one doubt that Gray's Elegy is poetry ? 
And though Wordsworth is a greater man than 
Cowper, it is possible, had there never been a 
" Task," that there might never have been an 
" Excursion." The poetry of the century is 
below our lofty English average, but it is not 
contemptible ; and when it is good it has some 
rare qualities indeed. 

In the poetry of the century are three distinct 
types : first, that of Pope ; next, that of which 
the " Elegy " is the masterpiece ; lastly, the songs 
of Burns. Now, the first belongs to the age of 
Louis XIV. The second is the typical poetry 
of the century. The third is but the clarion 
that heralds the revolutionary outburst which 
gave us Byron, Shelley, Scott, Coleridge, Words- 
worth, Goethe, and Schiller. Cowper in part 
belongs to the three types ; he is the connecting 
link between them all: touching Pope by his 
easy mastery of rhyme, akin to Gray by his ex- 
quisite culture and grace, foretelling Words- 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 33 

worth and Shelley by his moral and social ear- 
nestness. If the century produced little true 
poetry, it produced some little that is very good, 
and a good deal which has some very fine qual- 
ities. The " Rape of the Lock " is a poem in a 
class by itself, and Pope wrote other pieces of 
magical skill and verve. Goldsmith's poems 
would please us more if he had not bettered 
them himself in his own prose. Burns wrote 
the most ringing songs in our literature. Cow- 
per is a true poet of a very rare type, one of the 
most important in the development of English 
poetry. And Gray's Elegy is better known and 
more widely loved than any single poem in our 
language. All this should be enough to save 
the age of prose from the charge of being 
prosaic. 

In the best poetry of the century (at least 
after Pope's death) there is a new power, a new 
poetic field, a new source of poetry. The 
new source of poetry is the People ; its new 
field is the home ; the new power within 
it is to serve the cause of humanity. It 
told the short and simple annals of the poor. 
It is a field unknown to Chaucer, Spen- 
ser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, or Pope. 
But Goldsmith has it in his heart of hearts ; 
such men as Thomson and Collins and Beattie 
and Crabbe have it, though they remain on the 
lower ranges at their best ; Burns is the very 



134 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

prophet of it ; and it glows in a gentle hermit- 
like way in every murmur of Cowper's tender 
soul. " The Task " is by reason of this one of 
the landmarks of our literature, though its own 
nobler progeny may have lessened its charm to 
us. It is because the original charm is still as 
fresh as ever, that we may call the " Elegy in a 
Country Churchyard " the central poem of the 
age. Our young word-mongers and unuttera- 
bles will tell us to-day that its moralizing is as 
obvious as a tombstone, that its melody is rudi- 
mentary, and its epithets almost trivial. Yes ! 
and for that reason it has sunk into the soul of 
all who speak the English tongue ; it has cre- 
ated the new poetry of the cottage ; its very 
surrender of brilliancy, subtlety, or novelty is 
its strength. The sustained undertone of pathos, 
the magical unity of its thought and its color- 
ing, the simple humanity of it, — all these make 
the " Elegy " the poem of the eighteenth cent- 
ury, the voice of the humane age at its best. 

Poetry is the central art ; but it is not all art ; 
and the art of the century deserves a word. 
We may give up architecture at once. People 
were so much absorbed in making their homes 
comfortable within, that they seemed blind to 
ugliness elsewhere ; and if Mr. Ruskin is certain 
that Satan had to do with the Churches of the 
Georgian era, there is no means of disproving 
it. But Reynolds remains the greatest English 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 35 

painter ; Gainsborough and Romney have not 
been surpassed in their own line ; Hogarth re- 
mains still our greatest humorist with the pencil ; 
Garrick is still our greatest actor ; Flaxman is 
still our greatest sculptor; and it is well to re- 
member that Turner was of the Royal Academy 
before the century was out. But besides all 
these, Crome, Stothard, Blake, Bewick, Chip- 
pendale, Wedgwood, and Bartolozzi worked in 
the century — and in their given lines these men 
have never been surpassed. 

There is another art which lies closer to civi- 
lization than any art but poetry. Music is a 
better test of the moral culture of an age than 
its painting, or its sculpture, or even its archi- 
tecture. Music, by its nature, is ubiquitous, as 
much almost as poetry itself ; in one sense more 
so, for its vernacular tongue is common to man- 
kind. Music in its nature is social, it can enter 
every home, it is not the privilege of the rich ; 
and thus it belongs to the social and domestic 
life of a people, as painting and sculpture, the 
arts of the few, never have done or can do. It 
touches the heart and the character as the arts 
of form have never sought to do, at least in the 
modern world. When we test the civilization 
of an age by its art, we should look to its music 
next to its poetry, and sometimes even more 
than to its poetry. Critics who talk about the 
debasement of the age when church-wardens 



I36 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

built those mongrel temples must assuredly be 
deaf. Those church-wardens and the rest of the 
congregation wept as they listened to Handel 
and Mozart. One wearies of hearing how grand 
and precious a time is ours, now that we can 
draw a cornflower right. 

Music is the art of the eighteenth century, 
the art wherein it stands supreme in the ages ; 
perfect, complete, and self-created. The whole 
gamut of music (except the plain song, part 
song, dance, and mass) is the creation of the 
eighteenth century: opera, sonata, concerto, 
symphony, oratorio ; and the full use of instru- 
mentation, harmony, air, chorus, march, and 
fugue, all belong to that age. If one thinks of 
the pathos of those great songs, of the majesty 
of those full choirs, of the inexhaustible melody 
of their operas, and all that Bach, Handel, 
Haydn, Mozart, Gluck, and the early years of 
Beethoven gave us, it is strange to hear that 
that age was dead to art. Neither the age 
which gave us the Madonnas and the Sistine, 
nor the age which gave us Reims and West- 
minster Abbey, nor even the age which gave us 
the Parthenon, did more for humanity than the 
age to which we owe the oratorios, and the 
operas, the sonatas, symphonies, and masses of 
the great age of music. 

Not merely was music of the highest order 
produced, not merely did that age create almost 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 37 

all the great orders of music, but the generation 
gave itself to music with a passion such as 
marks all ages wherein art reaches its zenith. 
When Handel and Buononcini, Gluck and 
Piccini, Farinelli and Caffarelli, divided the 
town, it was not with the languid partisanship 
which amuses our leisure, but with the passions 
of the red and green factions in the Circus of 
Byzantium. England, it is true, had few musi- 
cians of its own ; but Handel is for practical 
purposes an English musician, and the great 
Italian singers and the great German masters 
were never more truly at home than when sur- 
rounded by English admirers. Our people bore 
their fair share of this new birth of art, especially 
if our national anthem was really the product of 
this age. And not our people only, but the 
men of culture, of rank, of power, and the court 
itself. And the story that the king caused the 
whole house to rise when the Hallelujah 
Chorus was heard is a happy symbol of the en- 
thusiasm of the time. 

Their music showed that their hearts were in 
the right place, but they showed it in more 
practical ways. The age, with all its grossness, 
laid the seeds of those social reforms, which it 
is the boast of our own time to have matured. 
It was then that the greatest part of the hospi- 
tals as we know them were founded ; the asy- 
lums, reformatories, infirmaries, benefit societies 



133 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

Sunday-schools, and the like. It was then, 
amidst a sea of misery and cruelty, that How- 
ard began what Burke called " his circumnavi- 
gation of charity." Then, too, began that holy 
war against slavery and the slave-trade, against 
barbarous punishments, foul prisons, against 
the abuses of justice, the war with ignorance, 
drunkenness, and vice. Captain Coram, and 
Jonas Hanway, and John Howard, and Thomas 
Raikes, led the way for those social efforts 
which have taken such proportions. Jeremy 
Bentham and Samuel Romilly struck at the 
abuses of law ; Clarkson and Wilberforce and 
the anti-slavery reformers at slavery and the 
trade in men. Methodism, or rather religious 
earnestness, lies at the heart of the eighteenth 
century ; and the work of Wesley and Whitefield 
is as much a part of its life, as the work of 
Johnson, Hume, or Watt. That great revival 
of spiritual energy in the midst of a sceptical 
and jovial society was no accident, nor was it 
merely the impulse of two great souls. It is the 
same humanity which breathes through the 
scepticism of Hume, and the humor of Field- 
ing ; and it runs like a silver thread through 
the whole fabric of that epoch. Cowper is its 
poet, Wilberforce was its orator, Whitefield was 
its preacher, Wesley was its legislator, and 
Priestley himself the philosopher whom it cast 
forth. The abolition of slavery, a religious re- 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 39 

spect for the most miserable of human beings, 
as a human soul, is its great work in the world. 
This was the central result of the eighteenth 
century ; nor can any century in history show a 
nobler. The new gospel of duty to our neigh- 
bor, was of the very essence of that age. The 
French Revolution itself is but the social form 
of the same spirit. He who misses this will 
never understand the eighteenth century. It 
means Howard and Clarkson just as much as it 
means Fielding and Gibbon ; it means Wesley 
and Whitefield quite as much as it means Hume 
or Watt. And they who shall see how to recon- 
cile Berkeley with Fielding, Wesley with Hume, 
and Watt with Cowper, so that all may be 
brought home to the fold of humanity at last, 
will not only interpret aright the eighteenth 
century, but they will anticipate the task of the 
twentieth. 

A few words about the eighteenth century 
afford no space to touch on the greatest event of 
it — the Revolutionary crisis itself. The intel- 
lectual preparation for it is all that we can here 
note ; and we may hear the rumblings of the 
great earthquake in every page of Hume, Adam 
Smith, Priestley, and Bentham ; nay, in Cow- 
per and Burns, and Wordsworth and Coleridge. 
The " Rights of Man," the " Declaration of 
Independence," the " Negro's Complaint," " the 
greatest happiness of the greatest number," 



140 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

" A man 's a man for a' that," the " new birth " 
of the Methodists, were all phases of one move- 
ment to attain the full conditions of humanity. 
The Revolution did not happen in 1789 nor in 
1793. The Terror was in '93 ; the old system 
collapsed in '89. But the Revolution is con- 
tinuing still, violent in France, deep and quiet 
in England. No one of its problems is com- 
pletely solved ; no one of them is removed from 
solution ; no one of its creations has complete 
possession of the field. The reconstruction, 
begun more than a hundred years ago, is doing 
still. For they see history upside down who 
look at the Revolution as a conflagration instead 
of a reconstruction ; or who find in the 
eighteenth century a suicide, instead of finding 
a birth. 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. 

By OSCAR BROWNING. 

PROBABLY no event in the history of England 
during the last hundred years is so important 
as the outbreak of war with France in 1793. 
It led, by a chain of almost necessary conse- 
quence, to our long struggle against Napoleon 
I. It added millions to our debt, it caused the 
distress and discontent which paved the way 
for the Reform Bill of 1832, its results placed 
England at the head of the European system. 
From a narrower point of view it formed a 
turning-point in the career of Pitt. Up to that 
time he had pursued a policy of peace, re- 
trenchment, and reform. The most enlight- 
ened minister of his age, he promised fair to 
anticipate by fifty years some of the most 
important changes which our own age has 
witnessed. From that period he was the 
minister of war, extravagance, and coercion. 
His name was a synonyme for blood, violence, 
and treachery, not only upon the Continent 
but among English Liberals. The war then 
kindled was not extinguished until it had 
killed him in its course. His friends saw the 
141 



142 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

" Austcrlitz look " on the blanched counte- 
nance of their dying chief. Passing a map of 
Europe in his last days, he said : " Roll up that 
map, we shall not want it any more." 

The character of our conduct in that crisis 
has long been disputed amongst politicians. 
War was opposed in 1793 by Fox and the 
Liberal party who followed him, and he lost no 
opportunity of urging the desirability of peace. 
However, when be became Foreign Minister 
after the death of Pitt, he did not make peace. 
In 1853, after the death of the Duke of Wel- 
lington, the question was argued by Richard 
Cobden. In his pamphlet, " 1793 and 1853," 
he tries to show that our war with France was 
neither necessary nor just. His arguments are 
those of a partisan, and the authorities which 
he recommends to his reverend correspondent, 
and on which he probably relied himself, are 
such ordinary books as the " Annual Register," 
the " Pictorial History of England," Alison's 
" History of Europe," and the " Parliamentary 
Debates." The present writer has had the 
opportunity of reading nearly all the despatches 
in the English Record Office and the French 
Foreign Office which bear upon the subject ; 
and his aim is to present as clear and impartial 
an account of the origin of the war as can be 
done in the limited space at his disposal. 

It is now admitted on all hands that the war 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. 143 

was none of our seeking. It was declared by 
the French Government, and would, perhaps, 
not have been declared by us. It may be 
urged that there was such a fundamental 
antagonism between the principles of the 
French Revolution and those of the English 
Government that the outbreak of war was 
merely a question of time. But we were a 
grave and serious nation, dealing with a crowd 
of heated anarchists, unused to govern, intem- 
perate of language. Neither their words nor 
their actions could be interpreted by ordinary 
rules. Had we exhausted every precaution ; 
were we guilty of no false step which we might 
have foreseen would lead us into the path 
along which we had no desire to move ? 

From the first outbreak of the Revolution 
the policy of the English Ministry had been to 
preserve a strict neutrality. Although the con- 
trary has often been maintained, there should 
be no doubt of it since the publication of the 
" History of the Politics of Great Britain arid 
France in 1800." This work, written by Herbert 
Marsh, the celebrated Professor of Divinity and 
the translator of Mosheim, is an exhaustive ex- 
amination of the conduct of the English Gov- 
ernment in its relations with France at this 
period. He proves, as far as could be proved 
from the materials within his reach : (1) that 
the British Government knew nothing of the 



144 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

Conference of Pilnitz, and that when requested 
in 1 79 1 to join a coalition against France it ab- 
solutely refused to do so ; (2) that we behaved 
with extreme friendliness to France in the affairs 
of San Domingo ; (3) that we were one of the 
first to recognize the new French Constitution 
of 1 79 1 ; (4) that in January, 1792, we took 
measures for reducing our armaments by sea 
and land ; (5) that when France had declared 
war against Austria on April 20, 1792, the Brit- 
ish Government took every pains to assert . its 
neutrality ; (6) that the proclamation of May 21st 
against seditious writings was a mere act of in- 
ternal policy, and was not directed against the 
French. 

Evidences of this position might be easily 
multiplied to any extent. On September 20, 
1 79 1, Lord Grenville writes from Weymouth 
that M. de Bintinaye, an emissary of the French 
emigres princes, is to be told " that his Majesty's 
resolution extends not only to the taking no 
part either in supporting or opposing the meas- 
ures which other powers may adopt, but also to 
the not influencing in any manner their deter- 
mination in that respect." " Sir R. Keith has 
been authorized to explain to the Emperor [of 
Germany] his Majesty's determination to take 
no part in the business of France unless any 
new circumstances should arise which might 
have an influence on the interests of his own 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. 145 

subjects. This is all that has passed, and the 
princes ought to know it." Nor was the dispo- 
sition of the French Government to us of a less 
friendly character. Chauvelin's instructions as 
Minister to England are dated April 19, 1792. 
He was the ostensible head of the French 
mission, but the moving spirit of it was Tal- 
leyrand, the famous Bishop of Autun, who 
could not be formally commissioned to the 
English court because no member of the 
Assemblee Nationale of 1789 was allowed to 
hold public office. He is charged to use every 
argument to keep England out of the new 
coalition, and to persuade her to enter into 
a defensive alliance with France for the mu- 
tual guarantee of each other's possessions. 
England might persuade Austria and Prussia to 
withdraw from the league. If Spain took part 
against France, France and England with South 
America might join against her. A defensive 
alliance might include a ratification of the Treaty 
of Commerce of 1787. But above all he was to 
try to obtain a loan of three or four millions in 
England, if possible, with the guarantee of the 
English Government. In return for the guar- 
antee he was to offer the cession of the isle of 
Tobago, almost entirely inhabited by English, 
of course with the consent of the inhabitants. 
The English Government were 'to be told that 
for their object there was no time like the 
present. 



I46 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

On August 4, 1792, Lord Gower writes to 
Lord Grenville that the royal family, especially 
the Queen, are in great danger, and he demands 
instructions for his conduct. Lord Grenville 
replies on August 9th, the very eve of the at- 
tack on the Tuileries and the last day of liberty 
for the monarchy of France, that no instructions 
could be of any service to their Majesties in the 
present crisis, that we have been strictly neutral 
during the last five years, that if we could do 
any good matters might be different. " The 
King's feelings might lead him to depart from 
the line he has chosen. But any measure of 
this kind could only commit the King s name 
in a business in which he has hitherto kept him- 
self unengaged without any reasonable hope of 
its producing a good effect ; on the contrary, 
interference might do harm. We are not indif- 
ferent to the fate of their most Christian Maj- 
esties. Express our sentiments of regard, 
friendship, and good-will, but make no declara- 
tion." 

We see that up to the 10th of August the 
British Government preserved an attitude of 
scrupulous neutrality. From that day the face 
of affairs was changed. The King was a pris- 
oner in the Temple ; the royal authority was in 
abeyance. The Government were compelled 
either to recall their ambassador or to recognize 
the validity of the Provisional Committee. In 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. 1 47 

recalling Lord Gower they followed the exam- 
ple of other European nations. Indeed, the 
massacre of September followed closely upon 
August 10th, and the life of an intimate friend 
of the royal family would scarcely have been 
secure. The Duke of Dorset, Lord Gower's 
predecessor, had been forced to leave Paris, be- 
cause a letter written to the Comte d'Artois, 
congratulating the Count on his safe escape 
from Paris, had been found upon one of the 
Duke's servants. Mr. Cobden makes a great 
matter of this recall of Lord Gower, and says 
that after the deposition of Louis Philippe in 
1848 our Minister continued to be accredited 
to the French Republic. Such, however, were 
not the views held either in France or England 
at the time. On August 28th Chauvelin wrote 
to Lebrun that the recall of Lord Gower need 
not affect the neutrality of England : " Ce rappel 
tient uniquement a ces raisons d' Etiquette et de 
bienseance." Lebrun, on August 29th, in his 
instructions to M. Noel, whom he was sending 
to England, says that notwithstanding the views 
of George III, who was rightly believed to be 
anxious for war, the Cabinet is composed of en- 
lightened men, and that Dundas' note recalling 
Lord Gower was very moderate. 

The events of August 10th might well im- 
press the English Government, when we con- 
sider the effect they produced upon Chauvelin 



143 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

himself. No sooner had he heard of what had 
occurred than he writes to Lord Grenville, that 
criminal and disastrous events have taken place 
in Paris, that the security of the National As- 
sembly has been violated, that men of violent 
passions have led the multitude astray. He 
begs the King of England to use all his influence 
to prevent the armies of the enemy from inva- 
ding French territory, giving occasion for new 
excesses, and compromising still further the 
liberty, the safety, and even the existence of 
the King and of his family. No sooner has 
Chauvelin sent this despatch than he discovers 
his mistake. A Cabinet Council is called to de- 
liberate upon his letter. Chauvelin receives new 
intelligence from Paris. He calls Mr. Secretary 
Dundas and begs that the despatch may be 
returned to him and may be considered as non 
avenue. Dundas writes to one of the clerks of 
the Foreign Office : " Mr. Aust will not allow 
any copies of the paper delivered this day by 
M. Chauvelin to get out of the office, and will 
inform (by circulating this note) H. M.'s confi- 
dential servants who attended the Cabinet this 
day, that M. Chauvelin having in the most 
earnest manner requested the paper to be re- 
turned to him, Mr. Dundas, after consulting 
with Mr. Pitt, thought the reasons stated impos- 
sible to be resisted." The paper was therefore 
returned to Chauvelin, but a copy had been 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1763. 149 

taken of it which is now in the Record Office. 
Although Lord Gower was recalled from Paris, 
Chauvelin still remained in London, and it has 
often been asked why he did so. It has been 
said that although he was disowned by Ministers 
he knew himself to be on very good terms with 
the Opposition, and that he stayed in England 
that he might be a centre of intrigue. His 
despatches give little countenance to this idea, 
while they supply a natural reason for delay in 
presenting his letters of recall. When war 
between France and England became imminent, 
Chauvelin held some communication with the 
Opposition by means of Sheridan, who visited 
him secretly. But whilst there was a hope of 
peace or even of alliance between the two coun- 
tries, his great object was to avoid all suspicion 
of the kind. 

There is in the. French Foreign Office a 
despatch dated May 23, 1792, signed by Chau- 
velin, but evidently composed by Talleyrand, 
which, if read and pondered by Lebrun, should 
have deterred him forever from such intrigues. 
Talleyrand writes complaining of the indiscre- 
tion of French journalists, that the terms Minis- 
try and Opposition have a very different sense in 
England to that which is attributed to them 
abroad. " In reading French papers one would 
believe that the King and the partisans of 
privilege and of royal prerogative were on one 



ISO HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

side, and the friends of the people on the 
other, working incessantly, the one for author- 
ity, the other for liberty. If this were the case 
a revolution might be probable enough. But 
in fact the mass of the nation is generally in- 
different to all these political discussions which 
make such a noise amongst ourselves. Agricult- 
ure, art, manufacture, and commerce, the rise 
and fall of the funds, these are the main objects 
of attention; the debates of Parliament only 
interest the people in a secondary degree. The 
Opposition is generally regarded as an ingredient 
as necessary to the constitution as the Ministry 
itself, but that is all, and whenever they are 
seen at war with each other, whatever may be 
the opinion which is formed of their measures, 
the nation feels sure of liberty. Nor is the 
Ministry itself as instinctively attached to the 
King or as zealous for the royal prerogative as 
as is generally believed in France. Composed 
of different elements, it contains germs of dis- 
agreement which incline it at one time to the 
side of the monarchy, at another to that of the 
people." He concludes a long despatch by say- 
ing that they must treat with the Ministry 
alone, and must try to gain their confidence, 
and that is only to be done by showing the 
most firm determination to do nothing which 
may encourage dissension. 

These weighty words ought to dispose of the 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. 1 5 I 

opinion that Chauvelin's object in remaining in 
England was to intrigue with the Opposition. 
His real fear was lest his letters of recall should 
be refused by the court, and so the- rupture be 
brought about which he and his employers were 
most anxious to prevent. He writes to Lebrun 
on August 31st : " It would be natural to recall 
me as the English have recalled Lord Gower, 
and I should be glad to go ; but let me make 
the following observation. Lord Gower's recall 
is due only to the motive of de Heat esse tnonar- 
chique. We have no such reason ; we wish to 
preserve the best intelligence with England. 
Besides, Mr. Lindsay \the Secretary of Legation) 
remains. It might be difficult for you to draw 
up my letters of recall, or for me to present 
them. How very bad it would be if I were 
refused an audience ! what a triumph for our 
enemies ! All the friends we have in England 
are agreed upon this point." Indeed, the Pro- 
visional Government sent a new emissary to 
England in the person of M. Noel, who has 
made a greater reputation as a writer of school- 
books than as a diplomatist. They at first 
intended to supersede Chauvelin, and as a ci- 
devant marquis they always regarded him with 
suspicion. On September 6th, however, they 
definitely tell him that he may stay, yet warn 
him that he must be prepared to act cordially 
with the different persons charged' with special 



152 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

missions whom the Government are likely to 
send to London. Some of them were undoubt- 
edly intended as spies, others were got out of 
the way that they might escape the fate of their 
brother aristocrats in the prisons. 

During the autumn things remained tolerably 
quiet. The King was at Weymouth from Au- 
gust 17th to the end of September. The centre 
of disturbance was in the Ministry itself. The 
King had not given the Ministers his entire con- 
fidence. The French Revolution offended 
every principle and prejudice of his nature. 
Although we have no positive proof, we have 
many indications that the King was eager 
either to join the coalition or to take decisive 
steps for repressing the disorder in France, and 
seating his royal cousin firmly on the throne. 
The King was supported in the Ministry by 
Lord Thurlow, the Chancellor, whom Pitt was 
obliged to get rid of, and Lord Hawkesbury, 
the father of a hopeful son who had just entered 
Parliament, and who afterward became Lord 
Liverpool. Pitt depended upon his brother, 
Lord Chatham, First Lord of the Admiralty, a 
person of gentlemanly bearing, small abilities, 
and sententious wisdom, and the two Secreta- 
ries of State, Lord Grenville and Mr. Dundas. 
Lord Camden, the Duke of Richmond, and 
Lord Stafford formed a middle party, who oscil- 
lated between the two extremes. We shall 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. 1 53 

see that Pitt was ready all along to make any 
sacrifice for the preservation of peace with 
France. Grenville seems to have gradually 
drifted to the side of the King, who, as events 
progressed, became still more eager for war. 

The French Embassy had some hope that a 
Coalition Ministry would be formed which would 
be more favorable to their cause. The summer 
of 1792 was occupied by correspondence, inter- 
views, and conversations, all bearing on the 
possibility of including Pitt and Fox in the 
same Cabinet, and providing the country with a 
Ministry resting on a broad foundation. The 
true history of these intrigues has yet to be 
written. The account generally given of them 
is that Pitt was not unwilling to receive some 
of the Whig party, but that the scheme shat- 
tered upon the obstinacy and impracticability of 
Fox. There is in the British Museum (Add. 
MSS. 27,918) a secret political diary of the 
Duke of Leeds, which gives a minute account 
of these transactions, and one of different com- 
plexion to that which is derived from Lord 
Malmesbury's diary. According to Lord Mal- 
mesbury, Pitt was eager for the coalition. There 
was a certain difficulty about Fox, "perhaps it 
would not be quite easy to give Fox the Foreign 
Department immediately, but that in a few 
months he might certainly have it." " Pitt did 
not come with the King's command to propose 



154 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

a coalition, but that he would be responsible 
that it would please the King and the Queen, 
and that the only difficulty at all likely to arise 
was about Fox, and that difficulty entirely ow- 
ing to Fox's conduct in Parliament during the 
last four months." The only authority for 
these opinions of Pitt is Lord Loughborough, 
the very man whose restless desire for office and 
unscrupulous ambition was urging the Duke of 
Portland to sacrifice Fox. It is certain that the 
idea of a coalition was mentioned to Pitt and 
the King in June, but the Duke of Leeds' diary 
shows that neither of them seriously enter- 
tained the idea, and that Fox was perfectly 
justified in believing it to be impossible. On 
Tuesday, August 14th, the Duke of Leeds, who 
had been Foreign Minister in Pitt's Cabinet, and 
who expected to be made Prime Minister, with 
Pitt and Fox serving under him as secretaries, 
had an interview with the King at Windsor. 
The Duke expounded his plans, advocating as 
well as he could the cause of Mr. Fox. 
" Whether it had any effect I am ignorant, for 
his Majesty did not, I believe, mention Mr. 
Fox's name more than once, if even that, dur- 
ing the whole conversation. I mention the 
several interviews which had passed between 
Lord Loughborough and Mr. Dundas, at one 
at least of which Mr. Pitt had been present, and 
which had been mentioned in the newspapers 



FRA NCE A ND ENGLA ND IN 1 793. I 5 5 

as affording sufficient reason to suppose his 
Majesty's servants not indisposed to our ar- 
rangement, and I took for granted his Majesty 
was informed of every thing that had passed 
down to the present time. To my great sur- 
prise the King answered that he had not heard 
any thing upon the subject for a long time ; 
that Mr. Pitt had, indeed, some months ago 
mentioned something like an opening on the 
part of the Duke of Portland and his friends, to 
which his Majesty had answered, 'Anything 
complimentary to them, but no pozver.' " The 
Duke of Leeds pertinently remarks upon this : 
" The first part of this brief but curious answer 
explains the circumstance of the offer of the 
Garter to the Duke or Portland, and of the 
Marquisate of Rockingham to Lord Fitzwill- 
iam ; and the latter proves but too clearly the 
great difficulty, if not impossibility, of succeed- 
ing in the proposed arrangement. " The Duke 
of Leeds, unabashed by this repulse, went on to 
suggest that, although Pitt could not remain at 
the head of the Treasury, he could still be Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer as well as Secretary of 
State. " The King asked me who was pro- 
posed to be First Lord of the Treasury ? I 
answered that I could not tell, but that it was 
meant that some one should be in that situation 
who was on terms of friendship and confidence 
with both parties. His Majesty replied it 



156 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

would be very awkward for Mr. Pitt after hav- 
ing been head of that board to descend to an 
inferior situation at it, and that whoever was 
First Lord must either be a cipher or Mr. Pitt 
appear as a commis" 

On Wednesday, August 22d, the Duke of 
Leeds had an interview with Pitt. Pitt re- 
ceived him very civilly, but did not appear 
quite at his ease. The Duke told the same 
story that he'had told to the King. " Mr. Pitt 
listened attentively to all I said, and answered, 
there had been no thought of any alteration in 
the Government, that circumstances did not call 
for it, nor did the people wish it, and that no 
new arrangement, either by a change or coali- 
tion, had ever been in contemplation." On the 
Duke reminding him of the reported interviews 
between Lord Loughborough and Dundas, at 
which Pitt had been present, he said that it was 
true, but that such meetings had not in view 
any change of administration. The language 
both of Pitt and of the King admits of no 
doubt, and we must conclude that the negotia- 
tions for a coalition which have been repeated 
in all histories of the time have, as far as Pitt is 
concerned, no basis but the interested imagina- 
tion and creative memory of Lord Lough- 
borough. 

The King remained at Weymouth from the 
middle of August to the end of September, and 



PRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. 1 57 

during this time home politics were in abeyance, 
but events were moving rapidly in France. On 
September 20th, the cannonade of Valmy an- 
nounced, as Goethe said to those who heard it, 
the birth of a new era ; on October 23d, a salvo 
of artillery all along the French frontier an- 
nounced that the soil of France was free from 
the enemy. Before the end of September the 
French armies marched across the frontier, Nice 
was taken on September 28th, Spires on Sep- 
tember 30th ; the attacked became the aggres- 
sors, and the French Government imagined a 
victorious course of mingled conquest and propa- 
ganda. These events did not appear to com- 
promise English interests until Dumouriez 
began to overrun the Netherlands. The battle 
of Jemappes was fought on November 6th, and 
on November 14th the capture of Brussels laid 
the whole of Belgium at his feet. These vic- 
tories encouraged the French to take a higher 
tone. Chauvelin, who did not like to go to 
Court for fear he should be badly received, now 
asked his Government for credentials as Min- 
ister of the Republic. He writes to Lebrun on 
November 3d, that the time has come to treat 
openly with England, and that he wishes for 
positive instructions. 

Lebrun was clear-sighted enough to see the 
effect which the conquest of Belgium was likely 
to have in England. He writes to Chauvelin 



158 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

on October 30th : " The army of the Republic 
commanded by Dumouriez is on the point of 
entering, if it had not already entered, the ter- 
ritory of the Low Countries. It is possible that 
Dumouriez may conquer them, and in this case 
it is quite possible that the inhabitants will rise 
in a general insurrection against the House of 
Austria. What would England do in this case ? 
Would she feel bound by the convention of 
November 10, 1790? The Republic solemnly 
renounces every conquest." The next day, 
October 30th, Lebrun orders Chauvelin to an- 
nounce distinctly that " the nation will never 
suffer Belgium to be under foreign influence, 
and that it will never annex the smallest part of 
the French Empire." He adds: " Now we of 
course desire for our protection a democratic 
power on our frontier." On November 6th he 
shows a still greater desire to know what public 
opinion in England thinks about the conquest 
of the Netherlands, and he expresses the same 
view as before. On November 10th he writes in 
a similar strain to Noel : " Our policy is very 
simple on this point as on all others. We do 
not wish for conquest ; we have no desire to 
give any nation this or that form of government. 
The inhabitants of Belgium will choose that 
which suits them best ; we shall not interfere." 
Interested as the English might be in the fate 
of Belgium, they were far more interested in 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. 1 59 

that of Holland. Holland was united to us by 
the closest ties ; its friendship was the triumph 
of our diplomacy ; the power of the Stadtholder 
depended upon our support ; to desert it would 
have been an act of ingratitude as well as of 
weakness. At Pitt's accession to office in 1783, 
he found England, after her struggle with 
America, isolated in Europe. The main jealousy 
of this country was directed toward France. 
But France was really weak and anxious to re- 
cover something of the maritime power of which 
England had robbed her. With this object she 
turned to the strong fleet of Holland ; in close 
alliance with the Dutch she might regain her 
trade, and even establish a footing in India. 
The mission of Lord Malmesbury was designed 
to counteract these plans. Arriving in Holland 
when the power of the Stadtholder was at its 
lowest ebb, he reconstructed it, discomfited the 
patriot party which was devoted to France, and 
laid the foundations of the triple alliance between 
England, Holland, and Prussia, which for three 
years gave the law to Europe. Therefore, 
although we might overlook the conquest of 
Belgium, we could not but regard the least 
attempt upon Holland as a cause of war. Yet 
such was the levity of the French in this serious 
crisis, that Maret, afterward Duke of Bassano, 
who arrived in England about November 8th, 
having just left the victorious Dumouriez, told 



l6o HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

Chauvelin that Dumouriez had the intention of 
" throwing a few shells into Maestricht." Chau- 
velin had sense enough to see that this would 
make a breach inevitable. 

On November 21st, Maret, who was on the 
point of leaving England to return to France by 
way of Brussels, wrote a letter to Lebrun which 
exactly explains the situation. He proposes to 
tell Dumouriez that if he attacks Holland, which 
he certainly had in contemplation, it will inevi- 
tably mean war with England. War is certainly 
dreaded by the city, even if the Government 
desire to distract people's attention from home 
affairs. The philosopher-general will not be in- 
sensible to these arguments. He will prefer the 
hope of a general peace to an additional triumph. 
He then adds with cynical acuteness : " Whether 
the state of our finances make it impossible for 
us to go to war, or the fear of letting loose upon 
society a mob of unoccupied persons by dis- 
banding our armies make peace impossible, in 
either case the feeling of England toward us 
is of the first importance. If we wish for peace 
let us make an alliance with England ; if we 
desire war let us attempt to form a junction 
which will diminish the number of our enemies, 
and which may embroil England with Spain. 
Chauvelin, good-fellow as he is, is impossible 
here. Men are prejudiced against him. Send 
Barthelemi " (the best diplomatist the French 



FRA NCE A ND ENGL A ND IN 1 793 . 1 6 1 

possessed, who, in 1790, made the treaties of 
Bale with Prussia and Spain) " as ambassador 
extraordinary, and some one else as subordinate 
agent. I should be very happy to take this 
place. Nominate Chauvelin to some first-rate 
post. Noel could replace Barthelemi in Switzer- 
land." If this advice had been adopted, and as 
we shall see this was very nearly being the case, 
peace between the two countries would most 
probably have been preserved. 

We now come to the two acts of the French 
Government which formed the strongest case 
for grievance on the English side, and which 
are generally considered as the true causes of 
the war ; the decree of November 19th, and the 
opening of the navigation of the Scheldt. 
Each of these will require attention. The 
decree of November 19th was passed by the 
Convention in great haste and under the fol- 
lowing circumstances. In the middle of the 
sitting Rhul rose and stated that the district of 
Darmstadt, which properly belonged to France 
by the Treaty of Ryswick, had assumed the 
national cockade and asked to become French. 
The Duke of Deux Ponts had marched an 
army to stop the movement. " The citizens of 
the Duchy of Limburg, in the district of 
Darmstadt, ask our protection against the 
despots ; also the club of the Friends of Lib- 
erty and Equality established at Mayence have 



1 62 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

written to ask if you will grant protection to 
the people of Mayence, or abandon them to 
the mercy of the despots who threaten them." 
He concludes thus : " I ask that the nations who 
wish to fraternize with us shall be protected by 
the French nation." It will be seen that this 
proposition goes merely to the extent of defen- 
sive measures. It is then moved that Rhul's 
proposition be referred to the diplomatic com- 
mittee, which should determine how the French 
should not only protect but guarantee the lib- 
erty of surrounding nations. Legendre sup- 
ports the proposition. Brissot says that the 
diplomatic committee is about to speak on the 
subject on the following Friday (Nov. 19th is 
Monday). On Rhul urging the cause of the 
people of Mayence, Brissot asks that the 
principle of the decree shall be voted immedi- 
ately. At last Larevelliere-Lepeaux, that dis- 
tinguished member of the Directory, who 
afterward complained that it was so hard to 
found a new religion to take the place of 
Christianity, and to whom Talleyrand recom- 
mended the experiment of being crucified and 
rising again on the third day, proposed the 
decree in the following words : " The National 
Convention declares, in the name of the French 
nation, that it will give fraternity and assist- 
ance to all peoples who shall wish to recover 
their liberty, and charges the executive power 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. l6 3 

to give the necessary orders to the generals to 
carry assistance to these peoples, and to defend 
citizens who have been harassed, or who may 
be harassed in the cause of liberty." Sergent 
then proposed that the decree should be trans- 
lated into all languages and printed. The 
convention then proceeded to other business, 
and broke up at five o'clock. 

Such is the history of this famous decree. 
In the French manner of those days a few 
isolated facts repeated by a member were made 
the occasion for asserting a number of sweeping 
generalities, and the terms of the hastily passed 
decree went even beyond the intention and 
meaning of those who passed it. Was it 
worthy of a powerful nation like the English 
to treat every word of this hasty declaration, 
" translated into all languages," as if it were 
the solemn and authoritative voice of a grave 
and powerful legislature representing a united 
people ? 

The opening of the navigation of the Scheldt 
was much more serious. This is announced to 
Chauvelin in a letter from Lebrun, dated Nov. 
27th. " The executive council has just freed the 
navigation of the Scheldt. No injury is done 
to the rights of the Dutch. Our reasons are 
that the river takes its rise in France, and that 
a nation which has obtained its liberty cannot 
recognize a system of feudalism, and still less 



164 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

submit to it. This need not affect the good 
harmony which exists between ourselves and 
England. Engagements which the Belgians 
entered into before the epoch of their present 
liberty naturally fall to the ground." He urges 
Chauvelin to counteract any bad impressions 
which this may produce, and say that it was 
done in the interest of the prosperity of Bel- 
gium. It was natural that these two measures, 
following so quickly upon each other, should 
excite strong feeling in England. The views 
of the English Government are given in a 
despatch addressed to Chauvelin on December 
31st, signed, indeed, by Grenville, but bearing 
throughout the stamp of the stern and haughty 
style of William Pitt. His sentences,, when 
once known, are unmistakable. It states that 
in the decree of November 19th all England saw 
the formal declaration of a design to extend 
universally the new principles of government 
adopted in France, and to encourage disorder 
and revolt in all countries, even in those which 
are neutral. " The application of these princi- 
ples to the King's dominions has been shown 
unequivocally by the public reception given by 
the promoters of sedition in this country, and 
by the speeches made to them precisely at the 
time of this decree, and since on several differ- 
ent occasions. England cannot consider such 
an explanation [as has been given] satisfactory, 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. 1 65 

but she must look upon it as a frank avowal of 
those dispositions which she sees with so just 
an uneasiness and jealousy." 

With regard to the Scheldt the trumpet- 
voice of the statesman sounds with no uncer- 
tain note. " France can have no right to annul 
the stipulations relative to the Scheldt, unless she 
have also the right to set aside equally the other 
treaties between all the Powers of Europe, and 
all the other rights of England or her allies. 
She can even have no pretence to interfere in 
the question of opening the Scheldt, unless she 
were the sovereign of the Low Countries, or 
had the right to dictate laws to all Europe. 
England never will consent that France shall 
arrogate the power of annulling at her pleasure, 
and under the pretence of a pretended natural 
right of which she makes herself the only judge, 
the political system of Europe established by 
solemn treaties and guaranteed by the consent 
of all the Powers. This Government, adhering 
to the maxims which it has followed for more 
than a century, will also never see with indiffer- 
ence that France shall make herself either 
directly or indirectly the sovereign of the Low 
Countries, or general arbiter of the rights and 
liberties of Europe. If France is really desirous 
of maintaining peace and friendship with Eng- 
land, she must show herself disposed to re- 
nounce her views of aggression and aggrandize- 



1 66 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

ment, and to confine herself within her own 
territory, without insulting other Governments, 
without disturbing their tranquillity, without 
violating their rights." Chatham could not 
have spoken more plainly or more worthily. 
In these sentences is contained the whole 
opposition of England to the encroachments of 
the Revolution, to the spoliation of Napoleon. 
At the same time it may be argued whether 
the opening of the Scheldt was a question on 
which the English was bound to go to war. 
We appealed on our side to the law of nations, 
the French on theirs to the law of nature. 
Both these appeals may be disregarded in the 
inquiry. Our treaty with Holland of 1788 
bound us to guarantee the Dutch possessions 
from attack or from the threat of attack. But 
in this instance the Dutch did not protest 
against the action of the French, nor did they 
call upon us for our assistance. Therefore it 
was a matter with which we had no immediate 
concern. That we should not have considered 
it as a casus belli in the last resort is shown by 
the fact that negotiations were impending be- 
tween the Dutch and Dumouriez under the 
sanction of Lord Auckland at the time when 
the war eventually broke out. The idea of 
opening the Scheldt to commerce was not a 
new one. It had been threatened by Joseph II, 
and only laid aside upon French persuasion. 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. 1 67 

At this time we had instructed our ambassador 
at Vienna to inform the Emperor personally 
that there was no object of his ambition which 
we should not be ready to further, provided he 
would break his alliance with France. This 
had been written by Lord Carmarthen, while 
Pitt was still Prime Minister. It was scarcely 
reasonable to regard as an inexpiable insult to 
England the carrying out by one power of a 
measure which we had ourselves suggested to 
another. Other proofs are not wanting that 
neither the decree of November 19th nor the 
opening of the Scheldt would have been re- 
garded as sufficient reasons for going to war on 
the part of England. Chauvelin had a long 
interview with Grenville on November 29th, 
which left this impression upon his mind. 
Still more explicit is a letter of Maret, dated 
December 2d, in which he gives an account of 
two interviews, one with William Smith, Pitt's 
private secretary, and the other with Pitt him- 
self. From the first interview Maret derived 
the impression that England had negotiated 
with Spain, that Pitt was extremely reluctant 
to go to war, and the recognition of the French 
Republic was not at all unlikely. 

The interview with Pitt was more momen- 
tous. Pitt began by speaking of his fears about 
Holland, of his determination to support the 
allies of England, and to enforce the rigorous 



l68 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

execution of the treaties which unite her with 
other powers. He expressed a sincere desire to 
avoid a war which would be fatal to the repose 
and to the prosperity of the two nations, and 
asked if the same desire was shared by the 
French Government. On Maret giving satis- 
factory assurances of this, Pitt said : " If the 
French Government would authorize some one 
to confer with us we should be disposed to 
listen to him, and to treat him with cordiality 
and confidence." Maret. "You speak of a 
secret agent ; there is not such a one here. If 
there had been one in London I would rather 
that he had come here than myself." Pitt. " I 
mean a person with whom we could communi- 
cate cordially and frankly, and who would not 
repel our confidence." Maret said, that in that 
case England would have to recognize the 
Republic. Pitt replied that that course must 
be avoided, probably to spare the susceptibilities 
of the King. " Do not reject this offer and we 
will examine every thing carefully." Maret said 
that he would urge Lebrun to send some one. 
Pitt replied : " Why not yourself ? Write at 
once to Paris, moments are precious." Maret 
promised to do so. Pitt spoke again of Hol- 
land, and as Maret was going away Pitt called 
him back and alluded to the question of the 
Scheldt. Maret avoided discussion on this 
point, and Pitt mentioned the decree of No- 



FRA NCE A ND ENGLA ND IN 1 793 . 1 69 

vember 19th. Maret gave the same answer that 
he had given to Smith, namely, that it only 
applied to powers at war with France ; then 
Pitt cried : " If an interpretation of this kind 
were possible the effect would be excellent." 
Maret assured Pitt that the Government had 
nothing to do with the decree, that it was the 
work of a few exalted spirits, made in a burst 
of enthusiasm, and without discussion. Pitt 
concluded by urging Maret not to lose a 
moment in communicating with Lebrun. 

This interview shows that on December 1st 
peace between the two countries was quite pos- 
sible, that it was ardently desired by Pitt, and 
that the really burning question was the invasion 
of Holland, whereas the other two grievances of 
the Scheldt and of the decree of November 19th 
might have been satisfactorily arranged. It is 
tantalizing to reflect how nearly the arrange- 
ment which Pitt suggested was taking effect. 
On December 7th Lebrun determined to move 
Chauvelin to the Hague, and to authorize Maret 
to treat secretly with the English Government. 
He presents his project at the meeting of the 
executive council, but by some wave of infatua- 
tion it is rejected. We may read in the archives 
of the French Foreign Office the original minute 
of the Conseil Executif Provisoire, signed by 
Danton, Bariere, and others, which runs in these 
terms : " The Conseil Executif Provisoire de- 



170 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

termines that, while making no declaration about 
Holland, the conference with Pitt may be con- 
tinued, provided that it is done through Chau- 
velin, the accredited Minister." The French 
Government probably thought that England 
could be terrified, that the Opposition were as 
powerful as they represented themselves to be, 
and that a revolution in Ireland was imminent 
— a revolution which Lebrun had certainly been 
at infinite pains to stir up. Can we wonder that 
the face of Pitt appeared to Chauvelin to ex- 
press anxiety, embarrassment, and disquietude? 
On December 14th Maret saw Pitt again at eight 
o'clock in the evening. The interview was short. 
After a few words Pitt said : " Our conversation 
must be a private one. I am not authorized to 
say any more on State affairs." 

There exists in the English Record Office 
proof that the English Government was sincere 
in desiring the resumption of friendly relations 
with France, and that in spite of Burke and the 
emigres they now contemplated sending a Minis- 
ter to Paris. At the end of the volume of 
French papers for December, 1792, are the im- 
perfect drafts of two despatches intended for 
some one proceeding as envoy to France. It 
does not appear for whom they were intended, 
and they have no date. But from internal evi- 
dence they may be referred to December, 1792. 

On December 15th, the day after Pitt's second 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. I7I 

interview with Maret, the Alien Bill was intro- 
duced by Lord Grenville in the House of Lords. 
The conditions of the Bill were stringent : an 
account and description of all foreigners arriv- 
ing in the kingdom was to be taken at the 
several ports ; foreigners were not to bring with 
them arms or ammunition ; they were not to 
depart from the place in which they first arrived 
without a passport from the chief magistrate or 
the justice of the peace specifying the place they 
are going to ; on altering a passport or obtain- 
ing it under a false name they were to be 
banished the realm, and if they returned be 
transported for life ; the Secretary of State 
might give any suspected aliens in charge to one 
of his Majesty's messengers, to be by him con- 
ducted out of the realm ; his Majesty may, by 
proclamation, order in Council, or sign-manual, 
direct all aliens who arrived since January, 1792, 
other than merchants and their menial servants, 
to reside in such districts as he shall think neces- 
sary for the public security; they were then 
only to reside in these places under certain 
stringent conditions. This measure was strongly 
resisted in Parliament by Fox and the Opposi- 
tion, on the ground that the dangers against 
which it was directed were imaginary, or at least 
greatly exaggerated. It was supported with 
vehemence by Burke, who in this debate threw 
a Brummagem dagger on the floor of the House, 



I7 2 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

saying that we must keep French principles 
from our minds and French daggers from our 
hearts. 

Events moved hastily toward war. The 
troubled state of Europe justified calling out 
the militia. Parliament, which by statute must be 
summoned shortly after this, met on December 
13th. On December 15th Noel writes to Lebrun 
that he has had an affecting interview with 
William Smith, who is terribly distressed. " It 
is absolutely impossible for the British Govern- 
ment to bear with Chauvelin ; every one says 
so. Why are you so obstinate? Why plunge 
two nations into a war? " He writes again on 
the following day that he has seen Smith again, 
and urges some concessions with regard to the 
Scheldt. It was afterward suggested that this 
question might safely sleep if the executive 
council did nothing to enforce their decree. 
The French Government persevered in their 
system. On January 7th, letters of credence were 
despatched to Chauvelin, and he was ordered to 
present them. Chauvelin had an interview 
with Lord Grenville with regard to this on 
January 13th. Both the French and English 
accounts of this conversation are before us, and 
they show that Chauvelin was not entirely 
veracious. His position was indeed a difficult 
one. The face of Lord Grenville grew dark at 
the proposal, and he said that he must refer it 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. 1 73 

to his colleagues. Chauvelin began to feel 
that peace was impossible, and begged for his 
recall. 

On January 20th he received a letter from 
Lord Grenville, which must have removed any 
lingering doubt. He had written to ask — first 
whether his letters of credence would be re- 
ceived ; and, secondly, whether the provisions 
of the Alien Bill are to apply to him or not ; in 
his present position he cannot possibly be re- 
garded as subject to this law ; it would be an 
insult to his nation. Lord Grenville answers 
that his letters of credence cannot be received ; 
that as Minister from the most Christian King 
he would have enjoyed all the exemptions 
which the law grants to public Ministers, but 
that, as a private person, he cannot but return 
to the general mass of foreigners resident in 
England. 

On January 21st Louis XVI was executed. 
It is a mistake to suppose that this event of 
itself caused the war, although undoubtedly it 
profoundly affected George III. It was rather 
used by the Ministry as a popular opportunity 
for taking a step which had been already de- 
cided. The news reached London at five o'clock 
on January 23d. The king and queen, who 
were going to the theatre, gave up their inten- 
tion. At the Haymarket it was announced that 
there would be no performance the next day ; 



174 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

upon which the audience shouted, " No farce, 
no farce ! " and rose and went out. On January 
24th Chauvelin was peremptorily bidden by an 
Order in Council to leave the kingdom. He 
writes, on receiving it, that it will certainly be 
regarded as a declaration of war, and that it was 
an unexpected step. This dismissal of Chauve- 
lin cannot be defended. It was a punishment 
of an insulting nature inflicted on the French 
nation for having done what the English nation 
had done a century and a half before — executed 
their King after trial. To drive an accredited 
Minister from the country as a suspected alien 
was a blow which no nation could brook, and 
which the French would certainly not put up 
with in their present state of feverish excite- 
ment. It was, as Chauvelin said, " un coup de 
canon" equivalent to a declaration of war. It 
bears rather the trace of the vehemence of 
Burke and the narrow obstinacy of the King 
than of the calm self-restraint of the Prime 
Minister. 

If the Government had waited a little 
longer, this hasty step would have been un- 
necessary. 

On January 22d, two days before Lord Gren- 
ville's letter, Chauvelin was ordered by his own 
Government to leave London without delay. 
Chauvelin met the courier conveying this de- 
spatch at Blackheath. He was to send a note 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. 175 

to Lord Grenville, saying that the French are 
still willing to preserve a good intelligence, and 
to avoid a rupture. Maret, who was known to 
be popular with the English Government, was 
sent as charge d ' affaires to pave the way for 
Dumouriez, who was to come to England after 
he had visited Holland. The cause of this 
sudden change must be sought in the internal 
politics of Paris. The Government was divided 
between the Girondists and the Jacobins, the 
first somewhat weakened by their defeat on the 
King's trial, but still able to hold their own, and 
anxious for peace with England. The most 
active of the Girondists was General Dumouriez, 
who knew that Chauvelin was distasteful to the 
English Ministry, and he persuaded the execu- 
tive council to recall him, and to send Maret in 
his place. 

Maret passed Chauvelin on the way from 
Paris to Calais, close to Montreuil. He and his 
servants were asleep in their carriages, and they 
did not notice Chauvelin's liveries, so that it was 
not until his arrival at Dover on the 29th that 
he heard of Chauvelin's dismissal. Whatever 
instructions had been given to him were now 
useless. He sent a note to Lord Grenville to 
announce his arrival in England, and waited for 
new despatches from Lebrun and for the coming 
of Dumouriez. It is difficult to say whether 
peace was still possible. Some statesmen, in- 



176 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

eluding Lord Lansdowne, were not without 
hope of averting war ; not so, however, the 
Prince of Wales. Some one meeting him at 
supper with the Duchess of York, said : " There 
is a curious report abroad that Maret is come 
to London. The Frenchman who has arrived 
is a very different person." Upon which the 
Prince replied : " We know that well ; but if he 
were God Almighty himself he comes too late, 
and perhaps they will ask him to go away. 
Before three weeks war will be declared. Five 
of my brothers will fight at sea, I shall leave on 
March 10th to put myself at the head of the 
troops on the coast, and 50,000 foreign troops 
will enter Holland. The time is past ; we must 
make an end of these murderers." At the same 
time Maret's presence in England caused con- 
siderable alarm to the dmigrte. Maret himself 
was not without hopes of peace. He said that 
the sudden dismissal of Chauvelin was regretted 
by the Ministry as a precipitate act. 

In the meantime Chauvelin had arrived at 
Paris. His report decided the vacillating com- 
mittee. Dumouriez was ordered to proceed to 
Antwerp and to invade Holland, and on Febru- 
ary 1st war was declared against England and 
Holland. 

We are now in a position to decide the ques- 
tion as to who was most to blame for the rupture. 
No doubt the English had ample provocation, 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN 1793. 1 77 

but it may be questioned whether the English 
Government maintained to the last that system 
of dignified abstention and neutrality which 
they had at first displayed. The death of the 
King was not so entirely different to the events 
which had preceded it — the riots of October 
5th, the acceptance of the new constitution, the 
storming of the Tuileries on August 10th — as 
to justify action of a new and violent kind. The 
Ministry exaggerated the importance of French 
bombast and of English sedition. By allying 
ourselves with the small but distinguished mi- 
nority in the French Government we might have 
restrained their impetuous rivals from provoking 
two new and dangerous enemies. We ought to 
have accredited a minister to the French Re- 
public, we ought to have continued diplomatic 
relations with Chauvelin, we certainly ought not 
to have ordered him out of the country as a 
suspected alien. The influence of Burke and 
the emigres was very powerful, but they warned 
us against the wrong dangers. We needed pro- 
tection, not against the poison of French Re- 
publicanism, but against the rapacity of French 
armies and of the statesmen who directed them. 
Could we have remained neutral France would 
not have invaded Holland, and the history of Eu- 
rope might not have been sullied with the crimes 
of Napoleon. These speculations are of little 
use ; but even to those who believe that what has 



178 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

happened must have happened, it is interesting 
to trace the momentous effect of small diver- 
gencies, and to place our finger on the point at 
which the scale of fate seemed to tremble as it 
swerved. 



GENERAL CHANZY. 

The premature death of the one great sol- 
dier produced by France, in 1870-1, induces 
us briefly to review his exploits. From 
the moment when he attained command, intel- 
ligent observers of the fierce contest which was 
being waged in the region of the Loire, per- 
ceived that Chanzy was no ordinary man ; and, 
as the strife deepened, the magnificent stand he 
made against the huge German hosts, gained 
the respect, nay, the admiration, of Europe. 
The knowledge acquired since the war ended 
has elevated him even more in opinion, and it 
is now acknowledged that this eminent man 
had many of the gifts of a great commander. 
It is not only, though that is much, that Chanzy 
thoroughly understood his profession, and com- 
prehended in its various details the difficult 
practice of modern war ; in these respects he 
was perhaps equalled by the skilful Faidherbe, 
and the well-read Trochu. Nor was it only that 
he possessed the faculty of directing operations 
in the field ably, nor yet that he made himself 
conspicuous in organizing and preparing armies ; 
MacMahon could fight an excellent battle, and 
179 



l8o HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

D'Aurelle was capable of forming troops ; yet 
neither chief could be compared with him. The 
qualities that distinguished Chanzy raised him 
high above generals of these types : and we feel 
assured that had he had the resources, and the 
opportunity of more fortunate men, he would 
have ranked among the masters of war. His 
strategic conceptions, we see, were equal to com- 
binations on the largest scale, and were brilliant 
and sound alike ; and had he been allowed to 
carry out his plans, nay, had his advice been 
even followed, the efforts of France, on two oc- 
casions at least, might not improbably have 
been crowned with success, with ultimate con- 
sequences perhaps momentous. How admir- 
able was his conduct in the field, was made evi- 
dent in his memorable campaign between the 
Loire, the Sarthe, and the Mayenne, when at 
the head of a defeated army, composed largely 
of young levies, and suffering from every kind 
of privations, he more than once baffled the 
German legions, fought, and all but won one 
great pitched battle, and finally drew off in a 
masterly retreat a force still unbroken and even 
formidable ; and it may fairly be said that this 
grand resistance, described by Von Moltke 
himself as " amazing," and which utterly discon- 
certed the German chiefs, was the most perfect 
specimen of tactical skill shown on either side 
in the war of 1870. Chanzy, too, possessed in 



GENERAL CHANZY. l8l 

no ordinary degree one of the finest qualities of 
a true warrior — he inspired confidence and won 
the hearts of his troops ; it was observed of him 
that he could obtain more from his improvised 
army than any one else ; and though he was 
strict, nay, severe, in discipline, his officers and 
men were devoted to him. Yet we have still to 
notice the most distinctive and noblest feature 
of this great character. Alone of all the soldiers 
of France, Chanzy remained superior to adverse 
fortune, after the catastrophe of Bourbaki's 
army, and the calamitous end of the siege of 
Paris ; and alone he declared that it was still pos- 
sible, were but the nation to be true to itself, to 
maintain a contest that seemed to others hope- 
less. Nor was this heroic constancy foolhardi- 
ness; the plans of Chanzy were deeply laid, and 
had he been invested with the supreme com- 
mand, we shall not affirm that his resistance 
would not have worn the invaders out and have 
at least gained better terms for France than 
those imposed on her by the Peace of Frank- 
fort. 

Though long known as a soldier of promise, 
Chanzy was passed over by Napoleon III, and 
had only a brigade when the war began. When 
France rose to arms, after the disaster of Sedan, 
he was given a division of the 16th Corps, 
one of those improvised bodies with which 
Gambetta hoped to stem the tide of the Ger- 



1 82 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

man invasion. This promotion, it is said, was 
due to a letter from MacMahon, then a prisoner 
of war, who had formed a high estimate of 
Chanzy's powers ; and in this, as in other in- 
stances, the Duke of Magenta showed that he 
had the interests of his country at heart. Within 
a few weeks Chanzy was placed at the head of 
the 1 6th Corps, now north of the Loire ; the 
quality of his troops, and their fitness for the 
field, may be estimated from the following 
passage : " Discipline scarcely existed ; the 
soldiers had fallen into the habit of doing as 
they pleased, without minding their orders. 
. . . Drunkenness, too, had made great prog- 
ress ; obscene songs and the ' Marseillaise ' re- 
sounded in the ranks. . . . Some of the 
regiments are in a state of extreme want. . . ." 
Under the admirable direction of General 
D'Aurelle, but with Chanzy in immediate com- 
mand, a new spirit was breathed into this mass ; 
and before long, so remarkable are the instincts 
of the French race for war, it became a far from 
contemptible force. The 16th, joined with the 
15 th Corps, was now given the name of the 
Army of the Loire ; and by the first week of 
November, 1870, it held the country to the 
north of the river, between Beaugency, Blois, 
and Marchenoir. D'Aurelle now resolved to 
march on Orleans, which had been captured by 
a raid from Paris, and, if possible, to cut off a 



GENERAL CHANZY. 1 83 

Bavarian detachment, which was the only hos- 
tile body in his path ; and for this purpose he 
advanced his two corps, combining his opera- 
tions with a French division, which was to de- 
scend on Orleans from the Upper Loire. These 
movements led to the Battle of Coulmiers, the 
one French victory gained in the war ; and, 
though, owing to the delay of the distant French 
wing, the Bavarians contrived to make their 
escape, they were rudely handled and badly 
beaten. Chanzy was in command of the French 
left, but through the mistake of a cavalry leader 
his operations were not brilliant. His troops, 
however, had fought well ; and it is astonishing 
how the Army of the Loire could have attained 
efficiency in so brief a time. We quote from 
his report : " Our troops of the Loire and of 
the Garde Mobile, who, for the most part, had 
been in action for the first time, had behaved 

admirably The artillery deserved high 

praise ; and the cavalry had done very well ; its 
only mistake was that it did not understand the 
important part it might have played at the end 
of the battle." 

It is, in fact not in courage, nor even in en- 
ergy, but in endurance, and the power of cohe- 
sion ; above all, in confidence after defeat, that 
an improvised army like that of the Loire is so 
inferior to a long-trained enemy. 

This apparition of a victorious army, which 



1 84 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

seemed as if France could call up legions, so to 
speak, from the earth if she stamped her foot, 
perplexed the counsels of the Germans at Ver- 
sailles ; and it is now known that the French 
commander might have struck with great, per- 
haps immense effect. The Bavarian detach- 
ment, not 20,000 strong, was literally the only 
hostile force between D'Aurelle and the capital 
of France ; and had that general advanced 
boldly with his 60,000 or 70,000 men, he would 
almost certainly have crushed Von der Tann ; 
very probably have defeated the Grand Duke 
of Mecklenburgh, who was hurriedly sent off 
with a few thousand men to attempt to reach 
his Bavarian colleague ; and possibly might have 
raised the siege of Paris, for Von Moltke con- 
templated even this contingency. From the 
following, though the language is cautious, we 
see that Chanzy believed an operation possible, 
which Napoleon, we are convinced, would have 
tried. " It was perhaps possible, making good 
use of the enthusiasm produced by our victory, 
to have reached and beaten the army of Von 
der Tann before it could have received aid from 
the Grand Duke ; to have then assailed the 
Grand Duke's force, and so to have defeated 
the Germans in detail before the reinforcements, 
under the command of Prince Frederick Charles, 
could have arrived." 

D'Aurelle, however, fell back on Orleans, his 



GENERAL CHANZY. 1 85 

object being to make the position an entrenched 
camp of formidable strength, and a base for 
future offensive movements. This resolve is 
not to be wholly condemned ; but it deprived 
France of one admirable chance ; it made the 
attitude of the Army of the Loire feeble ; above 
all, it permitted the Germans to collect a power- 
ful force against their new-found enemy. Chanzy 
protested against this timid caution ; urged his 
chief to advance to the line of the Conlie, and 
to be ready to assume the offensive ; and espe- 
cially entreated him to" attack in detail Von der 
Tann, the Grand Duke, and Prince Frederick 
Charles, as, gathering together from wide dis- 
tances, and presenting their flanks to their col- 
lected enemy, these generals slowly converged 
on Orleans. These counsels were beyond dis- 
pute right ; and here we see the distinction 
between bold, yet scientific, and mere waiting 
strategy. Chanzy watched with impatience the 
occasion that was let slip : " We ought — and the 
chief of the 16th Corps insisted upon it — have 
made use of the opportunity, and have vigor- 
ously assailed the flank of the enemy, as . . . 
he defiled before us to join Prince Frederick 
Charles." 

It is gratifying, however, to know that D'Au- 
relle was not responsible for the defeats that 
followed. By the close of November the 15th 
and 16th Corps had been reinforced by the 17th, 



1 86 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

the 1 8th, and the 20th; and the French army, 
200,000 strong, filled the region around and in 
front of Orleans. The purpose of D'Aurelle 
was to await the attack of the enemy in his en- 
trenched camp, and he has left on record his 
assured conviction that in this position success 
was probable. Gambetta, however, who be- 
lieved himself as capable in directing armies as 
he certainly was in levying troops, having heard 
that Trochu was about to make a great effort to 
break out from Paris, insisted upon a general 
movement in the very teeth of Prince Frederick 
Charles; and for this purpose the 1 8th Corps 
was prematurely thrown forward on Beaune-la- 
Rolande, the 20th failing to give it support, 
while the 15 th, the 16th, and the 17th were or- 
dered to make what really was a flank march 
within reach of a foe at this moment all but 
concentrated. The 18th Corps was at once de- 
feated ; and then the Prince, by a masterly 
movement, combined with his supports on the 
left, fell on the French centre, the 15th Corps, 
and shattered it after a brave resistance. This 
stroke forced Chanzy, who up to this time had 
gained real, though slight advantages, to fall 
back with the 16th on the 17th Corps; and 
as the German commander followed up his 
success with characteristic energy and skill, 
the result was that the 15th Corps was all 
but ruined as a military force ; that Orleans 



GENERAL CHANZY. 1 87 

and the entrenched camp were carried and 
that the Army of the Loire was rent in 
twain, the 18th and 20th Corps being driven 
across the river, while the 16th, 17th, and 
the wreck of the 15th were rallied by Chanzy 
on the northern bank. A succession, in short, 
of false movements had inflicted a ruinous de- 
feat on France ; neither the defensive strategy 
of D'Aurelle, nor the bolder plans of his able 
lieutenant, had been given a chance of being 
carried out ; and it is a mere mistake to ascribe 
the issue to the quality alone of the French army. 
How badly Chanzy thought of Gambetta's 
projects we see from the following : " The gen- 
erals did all that was in their power to explain 
the danger of these operations . . . but the 
general plan was treated as a positive order of 
the Government, and we only discussed the 
means of executing it." 

After the defeat of D'Aurelle — he was cruelly 
dismissed for a failure not to be ascribed to him 
— the divided parts of the Army of the Loire 
were separated into two bodies, the First Army, 
given to Bourbaki, and the Second remaining 
under Chanzy. From this period we follow the 
career of Chanzy as a commander-in-chief ; 
and, as always happens with great men, he shone 
the more the higher he rose. His war-worn 
forces had been strengthened by the 21st Corps, 
moved up from the west, and by a flying column 



1 88 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

from Tours ; and by the 6th of December he 
had placed the army between Marchenoir, 
Josnes, and Beaugency, having skilfully chosen 
a strong defensive line, with his flanks covered 
by a great forest and the Loire. He was forth- 
with attacked by Prince Frederick Charles, who, 
having entered Orleans on the 4th and 5th, 
turned against the enemy hanging on his flank, 
no doubt confident of easy success ; but his 
calculations were completely baffled. In a series 
of stern and sustained engagements, Chanzy for 
four whole days repelled his assailant, inflicting 
on him considerable loss ; and though the Prince 
was reinforced from Orleans by a detachment 
under the Grand Duke of Mecklenburgh, he 
made no impression on his heroic enemy, until 
a demonstration from the Loire and Blois placed 
a German corps on the French rear. The terri- 
ble character of these battles may be estimated 
from this significant anecdote : " During the 
stern days of Josnes, a German officer of high 
rank who had been made prisoner, made no 
secret of the astonishment caused by the resist- 
ance of our young troops. He compared these 
battles on the plains of the Beauce to those of 
1866, in which he had taken part, and acknowl- 
edged that these last seemed but child's play to 
the incessant and obstinate contest which the 
Germans were compelled to maintain, in order 
to reduce to submission a nation believed, after 



GENERAL CHANZY. 1 89 

its disasters, to have been at the end of its 
resources." 

The tactics of Chanzy in these actions were 
fine specimens of military skill. He had, no 
doubt, the superiority in mere numbers, but his 
young and lately-defeated army was very inferior 
to the German legions. The strength of his 
well-chosen position enabled him to baffle the 
turning movements, so often successful with the 
German chiefs, and so formidable to immature 
troops ; and he compelled the Prince to attack 
in front, where the defensive had a decided ad- 
vantage. But like all generals who understand 
war, he avoided a mere passive defence — espe- 
cially trying to French soldiers — and on every 
occasion that seemed favorable, he assumed a 
bold yet judicious offensive. An English cor- 
respondent in the German camp, with marked 
sympathies on the German side, wrote thus of 
this remarkable passage of arms : " The French 
have the choice of positions, and possess a gen- 
eral who knows how to occupy and hold a good 
one. The actions of the last four days have, no 
doubt, encouraged the French, for they have 
been so long unaccustomed to victory that they 
will become hopeful at not being beaten. They 
have been fighting altogether eight days out of 
ten ; and troops of new formation, who can do 
this against veterans, and hold their own to the 
last, have a right to expect that fortune will 



I90 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

turn in their favor. The Germans, on the other 
hand, are stupefied by this extraordinary re- 
sistance." 

Chanzy's skill was not more remarkable than 
his confidence and tenacious energy ; his pres- 
ence electrified his young levies, and from this 
moment he held absolute sway over the hearts 
of officers and men alike. Gambetta, too, who 
with all his faults appreciated talent and force 
of character, thenceforward gave him his whole 
confidence. The following is worthy of both 
men, each great, yet with a different kind of 
greatness : " We congratulate you on your firm 
attitude, and have but one wish — that you may 
succeed in breathing your spirit into those who 
surround you." 

The astonishing efforts made by Chanzy once 
rnore disconcerted the strategists of Versailles. 
The great sortie from Paris had, no doubt, failed ; 
but it had cost the Germans thousands of lives, 
and the proud city still defied its enemy. So, 
too, D'Aurelle had succumbed with Orleans ; 
but a fresh army had arisen from the wreck, and 
it had found a chief who could make it accom- 
plish feats that seemed impossible to profes- 
sional soldiers. The position of the invaders 
became again perilous ; and this telegram, from 
an English source at Berlin, shows what was 
thought at the Prussian War Office of the situ- 
ation at this conjuncture : " The military posi- 



GENERAL CHANZY. 191 

tion of affairs is deemed critical in well-informed 
quarters. Uneasiness is felt as to the final issue 
of the contest." 

The superiority of Chanzy will at once be 
evident, if we compare his conduct with that of 
Bourbaki. The First Army had not suffered 
more than the Second in the defeats round Or- 
leans ; it had not been molested in its retreat ; 
and it had had some days to recruit its strength. 
Yet while Chanzy was making his heroic stand, 
exposed to the whole weight of his enemy's 
force, Bourbaki literally did nothing, and de- 
clared that he could not detach a man from his 
quarters at Bourges, to aid his colleague. This 
unpardonable remissness enabled the Germans to 
make the movement along the Loire which, as 
we said, endangered the flank of Chanzy, when 
it had been found impossible to break his front. 
From the following we see what his feelings 
were, and what doubtless he thought of the con- 
duct of a man who, though an accomplished 
soldier, was utterly unfit for chief command : 

" The movement which is possible, and in- 
dispensable to restore the situation of affairs, is 
this : whatever the risk, to march from Bourges 
to Vierzon ; to press forward the main body of 
the First Army by Romorantin upon Blois ; 
and to take a position between the Loire and 
the Cher, in order to interrupt the communi- 
cations of the enemy between Orleans and his 



192 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

troops near Tours, and to cut these last from 
their base of operations. If this be done, I 
promise that I will hold my own on the right 
bank of the Loire." 

The hostile movement in Chanzy's flank 
compelled him to leave his position on the 
Loire. This retreat, however, was in no sense 
retiring before a victorious enemy ; it was a 
purely strategic move, with important ulterior 
plans in view. The great object of the French 
Government was to direct a relieving force on 
Paris, already besieged for four months ; and 
whether this project was best or not, Gam- 
betta would hear of nothing else. Accordingly 
Chanzy resolved to ascend from the Loire, 
toward the capital, by the northwest ; and for 
his immediate purpose drew off his army to the 
Loir, an affluent of the great river. His re- 
treat across the plains of the Beauce might 
have been made perilous by a daring enemy ; 
but it was conducted with remarkable skill ; 
and the Germans were very much exhausted. 
By the 13th of December the French army was 
in position around Vendome, having scarcely 
been molested on the way. Chanzy remarked 
with truth : " The retreat of the Second Army 
from Josnes to Vendome, under the conditions 
of bad weather, fatigue, and dangers which 
attended it, was most honorable to the troops. 
It had sufficiently imposed on the enemy to 



GENERAL CHANZY. 1 93 

prevent him from disturbing it, and availing 
himself of chances of destroying it, which might 
have presented themselves had he known how 
to seize them." 

The object of the movement is thus de- 
scribed : " By its establishment on the Loire, 
the army threatened the flank of the enemy, if 
he descended from Orleans on Tours, without 
going far away from Chartres, in which place it 
was possible to move by Chateaudun remain- 
ing thus upon one of the chief lines which it 
would be necessary to follow, in order to begin 
again operations toward Paris, as soon as these 
should become possible." On the 15th, Chanzy 
was attacked again, Prince Frederick Charles 
having rightly judged that he was the foe to 
strike down at all cost. The French made a 
gallant resistance ; but on the second day their 
right wing was turned, and shattered by an 
attack in flank. Chanzy decided on a retreat 
to Le Mans, a strong position upon the Huisne, 
and a strategic point of no little value, his 
object being still to attain Paris. He drew off 
his army without difficulty : " The Second 
Army had again effected a retreat as difficult 
as the preceding ones, and which was as honor- 
able to it. The enemy, kept back on all points, 
had become less and less enterprising ; it was 
easy to perceive that, no more than our own, 
were his troops able to resist their fatigues ; 



194 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

they were, besides, demoralized by the continu- 
ation of a struggle which they had thought 
ended, but which was perpetually being kept 
up." 

The invaders, in fact, had immensely suffered ; 
and needed rest as much as their foes. The 
following from Gambetta is overdrawn, but it 
was an exaggeration only of truth : " You have 
decimated the men of Mecklenburgh ; the 
Bavarians have ceased to exist; the German 
army is already disquieted and worn out. Let 
us persist and we shall drive these hordes empty- 
handed out of France." 

Having been reinforced by a Breton detach- 
ment, Chanzy reached Le Mans on the 20th of 
December. During three weeks of incessant 
righting he had held the main German army at 
bay ; he had baffled completely its most brill- 
iant chief; he was nearer Paris, his real objec- 
tive, than when he had assumed the command 
on the Loire. A great general only could have 
done these things ; and he still held the capital 
steadily in view. " It was now within the power 
of the Second Army, if it were ready for the 
field, and had not too strong an enemy in its 
front, to ascend the Huisne rapidly, as if to 
menace Chartres — this place was held in force 
by the Germans, — and then, having masked the 
town, to move northward to throw its left 
upon the Seine, on the line of Mantes, in order 



GENERAL CHANZY. 195 

to assist a flotilla charged to revictual Paris, to 
threaten Versailles, and to make a combined 
effort with the defenders of the capital to break 
through the investment." 

Chanzy had soon established his army on the 
Huisne, throwing out posts to the Braye and 
the Loire. Meanwhile Prince Frederick Charles 
had fallen back, holding a long line from 
Chartres to Orleans, his worn-out troops being 
in sore distress. A pause in the contest now 
occurred ; and the belligerents on either side 
prepared to repair their forces, and to renew 
the struggle. A glance at the situation shows 
that if Germany was still, on the whole, success- 
ful, the position of France was very far from 
hopeless. The invaders, no doubt, still invested 
Paris ; they had hitherto been able to defeat 
or keep back the vast armed masses directed 
against them, with untiring energy, from many 
points ; and they had the advantages of a cen- 
tral position, of interior lines on the whole 
theatre, of a master of war in supreme com- 
mand, and of troops very superior to their foes. 
Nevertheless, imposing as seemed their atti- 
tude, they were exposed to peril of no ordinary 
kind, for they were thrown for leagues around a 
huge fortress, liable to fierce attacks from 
within and without ; they were plunged in the 
depths of a hostile country, a whole nation 
rising in arms against them ; and at this 



19 6 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

moment they were outnumbered in the field, 
since 300,000 men were required to hold Paris 
and the communications with the Rhine ; there 
were probably not 1 50,000 available for opera- 
tions elsewhere ; and their chiefs had been com- 
pelled to send for large reinforcements still far 
distant. On the other hand, Paris was still able 
to resist, and had a powerful army within its 
walls ; Faidherbe in the north had become 
menacing; Bourbaki on the Loire was giving 
signs of life ; Chanzy in the west was at the 
head of forces which every effort had failed to 
subdue ; and it was not impossible that 300,000 
men might be directed to the relief of the capi- 
tal, where a single victory might accomplish 
wonders. How Chanzy perceived the true 
state of affairs appears in a long despatch to 
Gambetta, which proves that he was no mean 
strategist. We have space only for a few sen- 
tences : " The resistance of Paris has a limit 
known to you; the time is pressing; and the 
great effort we must make can only succeed if 
all our forces co-operate skilfully according to a 
carefully-arranged plan. . . . With the ad- 
vantages he possesses the enemy evidently tries 
to attack successively, and in force, each of our 
armies ; he manoeuvres with great ability, and 
we are not well informed as to his principal 
movements, which he masks with remarkable 
skill." 



GENERAL CHANZY. 1 97 

The following was the plan proposed by 
Chanzy for the relief of the capital. It may be 
left with confidence to judges of war : " It is in- 
dispensable that the First and the Second Armies 
and that under the command of General Faid- 
herbe, should march simultaneously ; the Sec- 
ond from Le Mans to establish itself on the 
Eure between the Evreux and Chartres ; the 
First from Chatillon-sur-Seine in order to hold 
positions between the Marne and Seine, from 
Naquet to Chateau Thierry ; the Army of the 
North from Arras to place itself from Com- 
peigne to Beauvais. In addition to these three 
main operations, and to aid them, the divisions 
from Cherbourg would advance and cover the 
left of the Second Army. . . . Once our 
three principal armies shall have attained these 
positions, we must communicate with Paris and 
combine our efforts to reach the common ob- 
jective, the Army of Paris making at the same 
time vigorous sorties. ... By these means 
the enemy may be driven from his lines ; and 
then renewed efforts by the united armies, 
without and within Paris, may lead to the de- 
liverance of France from the invaders." 

Conjecture is useless whether this plan would 
have been attended with success or not. Von . 
Moltke, moving on shorter lines, might perhaps 
have maintained his grasp on the capital, and 
driven the armies of relief back ; or he might at 



198 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

some point have been defeated, with conse- 
quences, in that event, momentous. What can, 
however, be fairly said is, that Paris being the 
main objective, the plan of Chanzy was admira- 
bly laid : it contemplated a great concentric 
movement against the forces covering the siege, 
especially aiming at Prince Frederick Charles ; 
and it had the special merit of securing a re- 
treat on every line in the event of defeat. In 
an ill-omened hour, however, for France, Gam- 
betta rejected this judicious scheme, and 
adopted the fatal and wild project of detaching 
the First Army far to the east, in order to raise 
the siege of Belfort, and to reach the German 
communications with the Rhine. This move- 
ment, even in theory, false, and, in existing 
circumstances, as foolish as that which ended in 
the ruin of Sedan, was opposed by Chanzy, in 
an able paper ; but his protests might have been 
more vehement ; and he might have recollected 
how the youthful Bonaparte had refused to at- 
tempt an operation of the kind, which would 
have marred the immortal campaign of Italy. 
Yet we must not forget that, on two occasions, 
before Orleans, and at Le Mans, Chanzy gave 
counsels which, if followed, might have made 
the issue of the war different ; and he had not 
the authority nor, we must add, the unscrupu- 
lousness of the warrior of 1796. He wrote thus 
to Gambetta : " I wished to make a last effort 



GENERAL CHANZY. 1 99 

to prevent this operation. I insisted for the 
adoption and execution of the plan I had pro- 
posed." 

The eccentric movement which sent off Bour- 
baki to destruction amidst the snows of the 
Jura, freed Prince Frederick Charles from an 
enemy on his flank, and enabled him to turn his 
whole forces against the one chief he had found 
invincible. Drawing together his army and 
that of the Grand Duke — they had received 
considerable additional strength — the German 
commanders, in the first week of January, 
began to move toward Le Mans and the 
Huisne, approaching each other from Chartres 
and Orleans. The advanced posts of Chanzy 
were gradually driven in, though not without a 
tenacious resistance ; but his trust was in his 
positions on the Huisne, which he had strength- 
ened with remarkable skill, and he fell back on 
them with unabated confidence. He had still, 
perhaps, 90,000 men against 60,000 or 70,000 
Germans ; but, as his troops were not to be 
compared to their foes, he was very inferior in 
real force. The attack began on the 10th of 
January, but the decisive effort was made next 
day ; and the Prince struck home with his full 
strength. The defence, however, was stern and 
sustained ; the tenacity of Chanzy and his 
strong positions made up for the defects of his 
soldiers ; and after ten hours of desperate fight- 



200 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

ing the French were still in possession of their 
lines. Chanzy thus described the results of the 
battle : had he been in the place of the sluggish 
Bazaine, how different might have been the fate 
of Gravelotte ! — " The action continued along 
the whole line up to six o'clock. The night 
had arrived ; we had remained masters of all 
our positions, both on the plateau of Auvours 
and on the right bank of the Huisne. The only 
serious check we had sustained was the evacua- 
tion of Auvours for a moment, but this had 
been brilliantly and quickly repaired by the fine 
conduct of General Goujard at the head of a 
part of his Breton division, and of the troops of 
the 17th Corps which he had rallied. The 
enemy had made great efforts against the whole 
front of our lines from the Tertre Rouge to 
the left of the 21st Corps. If our losses had 
been serious, his had been even more considera- 
ble, owing to the advantage of our positions 
and the preparations we had made for defence." 
A sudden attack, made after nightfall, unex- 
pectedly by a German corps, discomfited, how- 
ever, the Breton levies, and placed a hostile 
force upon Chanzy's flank. Scenes of confusion 
and panic followed too characteristic of a raw 
army ; an effort to drive the enemy away failed ; 
and Chanzy, in order to avoid a disaster, was 
compelled to make a general retreat. The 
movement, however, was no rout ; the Germans, 



GENERAL CHANZY. 201 

in fact, were, for several hours, unaware of the 
real state of affairs, and of the great success, 
they had gained ; and though part of the French 
army disbanded, and several thousand prisoners 
were made, it was in tolerable order within two 
days. By the 20th, having been scarcely 
pursued, so heavy had been the loss of the 
Germans, Chanzy was once more in a good posi- 
tion, around Laval and upon the Mayenne ; 
and having been joined by a new corps, he was 
still formidable and with unbroken force. Calm, 
stern, and self-possessed as ever, he still looked 
forward to a march on Paris : " This army, 
which might have been supposed ruined, thus 
appeared once more, in renewed strength, ready 
to advance with four corps, numbering about 
1 50,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry, and 54 batteries 
of artillery without reckoning the Breton mo- 
biles, who were being organized, and who when 
drilled would swell our forces in the west to 
235,000 men. . . . Our course, therefore, 
was to make as quickly as possible good use of 
this force, and to march to the relief of Paris." 
The fall of Paris on the 28th of January, and 
the catastrophe of Bourbaki's army, prevented 
Chanzy from attempting this march. During 
the armistice that ensued he was invited to 
present a scheme of operations to the French 
Government in the event of a renewal of war. 
We shall quote a few passages from his masterly 



202 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

despatch, the whole of which should, however, 
be studied. Without concealing the perils of 
France, Chanzy showed with truth that she had 
still great resources : " We had immediately 
available, 222,000 infantry, 20,000 cavalry, 
33,900 artillery-men, 1,332 field-pieces with 242 
rounds for each piece, and 4,000 wagons for 
parks ; and, as resources to be organized, 
354,000 men in the territorial divisions and in 
the depots of Algeria, 132,000 recruits of the 
class of 1 87 1, 443 guns, mounted, though with- 
out horses, 398,000 projectiles, 1,200 wagons in 
our arsenals, and 12,000 horses which could be 
delivered within six weeks. . . . Finally, 
we possessed a country with a population of 
twenty-five millions of souls on which the in- 
vader had not set foot." 

A universal and fierce resistance, like that 
which Spain opposed to Napoleon, which, avoid- 
ing general engagements in the field, should 
compel the Germans to divide their forces, and 
to maintain armies at many points, and should 
aim at wearying them out at last, was obviously 
the true course to follow : " The troops at our 
disposal, we must not forget, have not, as yet, 
either sufficient organization or coherence, and 
are not sufficiently trained to war, to form 
armies capable of manoeuvring, and fighting 
persistently against those which the enemy can 
array in at least equal numbers. We must 



GENERAL CHANZY. 203 

therefore avoid battles which might become 
decisive. The object to aim at, is to make 
resistance national, and continuous at all points, 
and thus to force the enemy to disseminate 
his troops, to compel Germany to maintain in 
France an army of at least 500,000 men, and to 
subject her to losses which at last will tire her 
out. So we can await the time when, with 
organized forces, we shall be equal to a great 
effort, and shall be able, under less unfavorable 
conditions, to expel the enemy from the coun- 
try." 

A guerilla warfare of this kind, however, re- 
quired a real army in the field to maintain a 
solid and lasting defensive, and continually to 
hold the army in check. For this purpose 
Chanzy proposed to move the Second Army to 
the south of the Loire, and thus to make head 
against the invaders. The ability with which 
he marked out the lines of defence for this 
supreme contest, and the stern confidence with 
which he declared that he would carry the war 
to the last man of France, without doubt of the 
final issue, if the nation was worthy of its old 
renown, reminds us of Wellington at Torres 
Vedras : " Our organized armies, established on 
strong positions prepared for defence, could thus 
resist as long as possible, yielding ground when 
forced to do so, but only retreating upon new 
positions chosen beforehand, and so obtaining 



204 HISTORICAL STUDIES. 

the result which we must aim at, the prolonga- 
tion of the contest. This resistance could be 
carried in parts of the country, in succession, 
which would present increasing difficulties to the 
enemy, especially in Auvergne, and so we should 
acquire solidity and strength, for we should gain 
time to organize and maintain our resources. " 

Recollecting what Chanzy had accomplished, 
who shall say that this project was chimerical, 
had this great soldier been in supreme com- 
mand ? Chanzy believed that ultimate success 
was probable ; and after the war declared that 
France had fallen from want of reliance on her- 
self : " We found, even in our improvised 
soldiers, the great military qualities which are 
the inalienable heritage of our race ; and the 
principal cause of our final overthrow was a 
want of confidence in ourselves." 

Chanzy, however, added these words of cau- 
tion against that mischievous popular fallacy, 
that a nation may trust for its defence on 
armies formed of young levies : " Yet let us 
not suppose that improvised armies are a suffi- 
cient security in the great crises of war which 
may again happen. The events in which we 
have taken part demonstrate beyond question, 
that a nation can only be sure of its indepen- 
dence, and really strong, when its military organi- 
zation is carefully matured, complete, and 
powerful." 



GENERAL CHANZY. 205 

As is well known, this eminent man had not 
an opportunity to carry out his projects, for 
the war ended with the Fall of Paris. France, 
however, appreciated his great deeds ; she felt 
that he had redeemed her honor ; and he re- 
ceived the thanks of the Assembly at Versailles. 
Chanzy held afterward high command ; he 
showed great capacity of organization, and of 
preparing the new army of France ; and had 
war with Germany broken out again, he would 
certainly have been commander-in-chief. He 
was esteemed, too, by his late enemy ; was re- 
ceived at Berlin with extreme courtesy ; and 
Moltke has placed this opinion on record, that 
his " reiterated efforts surpassed belief." He 
has passed away, and it was not given him to 
attempt to avenge the disasters of France, and 
to bring victory back to her standards. The 
vulgar opinion may be that success is necessary 
to make a general great ; but this is not the 
judgment of true critics ; and Chanzy will rank 
among captains, like William of Orange, Villars, 
and Washington — men who never won a great 
pitched battle, yet whose martial qualities and 
heroic constancy, conspicuously shown in adverse 
fortune, entitled them to the admiration of man- 
kind. 

THE END. 



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